I NQU I R I NG A BOU T G OD

Inquiring about God is the rst of two volumes of Nicholas

Wolterstor s collected papers. Th is volume collects Wolterstor s
essays in the philosophy of religion written over the last thirty-ve
years. The essays, which span a range of topics including Kants philosophy of religion, the medieval (or classical) conception of God,
and the problem of evil, are unied by the conviction that some of
the central claims made by the classical theistic tradition, such as
the claims that God is timeless, simple, and impassible, should be
rejected. Still, Wolterstor contends, rejecting the classical conception of God does not imply that theists should accept the Kantian
view, according to which God cannot be known. Of interest to
both philosophers and theologians, Inquiring about God should
give the reader a lively sense of the creative and powerful work
done in contemporary philosophical theology by one of its foremost
practitioners.
is Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of
Philosophical Theology, Yale University, and Senior Fellow, Institute
for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia. His many
publications include Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reections on
the Claim that God Speaks (), John Locke and the Ethics of Belief
(), and Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology (, ).
is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Vermont. He is author of The Normative Web: An
Argument for Moral Realism () and editor of six books including The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid, co-edited with Ren
van Woudenberg ().

I NQU I R I NG A BOU T G OD
Selected Essays, Volume
N IC HOL A S WOLT E R S TOR F F

T E R E NC E C U N EO


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Nicholas Wolterstor and Terence Cuneo
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Inquiring about God : selected essays / Nicholas Wolterstor, Terence Cuneo.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
---- (hardback) . Philosophical theology.
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Contents

Editors introduction
Acknowledgments

page vi
vii

Introduction

Analytic philosophy of religion: retrospect and prospect

Is it possible and desirable for theologians to recover from Kant?

Conundrums in Kants rational religion

In defense of Gaunilos defense of the fool

Divine simplicity

Alston on Aquinas on theological predication

God everlasting

Unqualied divine temporality

Suering love

Is God disturbed by what transpires in human aairs?

The silence of the God who speaks

Barth on evil

Tertullians enduring question

Bibliography
Index

Editors introduction

Several years ago, I approached Nick Wolterstor with the idea of publishing his papers in the philosophy of religion and epistemology. Lying
behind the suggestion was the thought that it would be good for the philosophical community to have these essays, which lay scattered in various
essay collections and journals, collected together. Nick liked the idea and,
fortunately, so did Cambridge University Press. The result is two volumes
of Nicks collected papers: Inquiring about God and Practices of Belief.
Nick and I chose to include the thirteen chapters that comprise this
volume. Our primary principle of selection was to include self-standing
essays that have minimal overlap with each other and the various books
that Nick has published. With the exception of the Introduction and
chapter , Is God disturbed by what transpires in human aairs?, the
essays that appear in this volume have all been previously published and
are in more or less their original form. Editing has been done here and
there to increase clarity, minimize overlap, and bring some language up
to date.
For their help in seeing this project through, I would like to thank Sean
Christy, Joyce Dunlap, and Donna Kruithof; they have provided muchappreciated assistance in preparing the book. I would also like to thank
Jim Bratt at the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship for providing a
summer stipend, which helped underwrite copyediting assistance. Finally,
Id like to express a note of special thanks to Nick himself. Our mutual
baement concerning the latest computer technologies notwithstanding,
it has been a great pleasure to work on this project together.
TDC

vi

Acknowledgments

Analytic Philosophy of Religion: Retrospect and Prospect (chapter )

originally appeared in Perspectives in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion,
ed. Tommi Lehtonen and Timo Koistenen (Helsinki: Luther-Agricola
Society, ). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Is It Possible and Desirable for Theologians to Recover from Kant?
(chapter ) originally appeared in Theology Today , : . Reprinted
by permission of the publisher.
Conundrums in Kants Rational Religion (chapter ) originally
appeared in Kants Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered, ed. P. Rossi and
M. Wreen (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, ), .
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
In Defense of Gaunilos Defense of the Fool (chapter ) originally
appeared in Christian Perspectives on Religious Knowledge, ed. C. S. Evans
and M. Westphal ( , Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
Grand Rapids, Michigan). Reprinted by permission of the publisher, all
rights reserved.
Divine Simplicity (chapter ) originally appeared in Philosophical
Perspectives, , Philosophy of Religion, , ed. James E. Tomberlin.
Reprinted by permission of Ridgeview Publishing Company.
Alston on Aquinas on Theological Predication (chapter ) originally
appeared in Perspectives on the Philosophy of William P. Alston, ed. Heather
Battaly and Michael P. Lynch, . Reprinted by permission of Rowman
& Littleeld Publishing Group.
God Everlasting (chapter ) originally appeared in God and the Good,
ed. Cli Orlebeke ( , Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
Grand Rapids, Michigan). Reprinted by permission of the publisher, all
rights reserved.
Unqualied Divine Temporality (chapter ) originally appeared in
God and Time: Four Views, ed. Gregory Ganssle ( by Gregory
vii

viii

Acknowledgments

Ganssle). Reprinted and published by permission of InterVarsity Press.

P.O. Box Downers Grove, IL , USA. www.ivppress.com.
Suering Love (chapter ) originally appeared in Philosophy and the
Christian Faith, ed. Thomas V. Morris, . Reprinted by permission of
the University of Notre Dame Press.
Barth on Evil (chapter ) originally appeared in Faith and Philosophy
, : . Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Tertullians Enduring Question (chapter ) originally appeared in
The Cresset, , no. (Trinity ): . Reprinted with the permission
of the publisher.
The author, editor, and publisher would like to thank these publishers
for permission to reproduce the essays in this volume.

Introduction

The past several decades have seen an extraordinary ourishing of philosophy of religion within the analytic tradition of philosophy. The essays
that follow, written over a span of thirty-ve years, are located within that
development. In the essay that opens the collection, Analytic philosophy
of religion: retrospect and prospect, I oer a general characterization of
the development, along with an account of the changes within the analytic tradition of philosophy that made analytic philosophy of religion
possible in the form it has taken.
Most discussions from the Western philosophical tradition that we
would classify as philosophy of religion fall under one or the other of
three headings. Some are philosophical reections on some aspect of the
human phenomenon of religion: reections on religious experience, on
the nature of religious language, on liturgy and ritual, on the interpretation of sacred texts, on prayer, on the essence of religion, and so forth.
Some are philosophical reections on the epistemology of religious
belief: reections on the nature of religious belief, on what is required of
a religious belief for it to count as knowledge and whether some religious
beliefs do in fact count as knowledge, on what is required of a religious
belief to be entitled and whether some religious beliefs are in fact entitled,
on the probability that one and another religious belief is true, and so
forth. And some are philosophical theology, that is, philosophical reections on God and Gods relation to experience and reality: reections on
various of Gods attributes, on the relation of God to evil, on the relation
of God to human freedom, on the relation of God to laws of nature, and
so forth. Apart from the fact that analytic philosophers have displayed
no interest in reecting on the essence of religion, all the questions mentioned have been discussed over the past several decades, many at length.

Inquiring about God

At mid-twentieth century there were no intimations of this development. There were some discussions on various aspects of religion;
observers might have expected those to continue, though not to ourish.
But no philosophical theology was being done, not, at least, within
mainline philosophy. Instead of talking about God, philosophers were
debating whether it is possible to talk about God. Pervasive doubts on
that score made reections on the epistemology of beliefs about God
irrelevant.
Why were philosophers not talking about God but debating whether
it is possible to talk about God? Obviously some were not talking about
God because they did not believe in God. But even those who counted
themselves as theistic believers found themselves preoccupied with the
meta-question of whether it is possible to speak about God. Why was
that?
The immediate culprit was logical positivism, which at the time
appeared to be in its prime but was in fact near death, as shortly became
clear. The positivist criterion of meaning appeared to have the implication that theological sentences lack sense; the criterion had been formulated with that result in mind, among others. But preoccupation with the
meta-question, whether it is possible to speak about God, did not begin
with the positivists. It began with Kant.
A prominent theme in Kants critical philosophy is that of the limits
or boundaries of thought and knowledge. Confronted with the traditions
of rational theology, rational psychology, and rational cosmology, Kants
critical philosophy led him to ask whether such enterprises represent
attempts to trangress the boundaries of the knowable. Indeed, it became
for Kant a serious question whether we can even have genuine thoughts
about God never mind whether any of those thoughts constitute knowledge. May it be that God is beyond the boundary of the thinkable? If so,
then not even theologia revelata is possible.
The power of Kants question has haunted and intimidated theology
in the modern period, both theology as developed by theologians and
theology as developed by philosophers. It has led theologians to preface whatever they have to say on theological matters with lengthy prolegomena; it led mainline philosophers to stay away from philosophical
theology altogether, and to talk instead about religion and the possibility
of theology. In the second essay in this collection, Is it possible and
desirable for theologians to recover from Kant? I discuss in detail Kants
doctrine of limits and why this doctrine led him to regard it as a serious question whether God lies beyond the limits of the thinkable and

Introduction

the knowable. I go on to argue that the assumptions underlying Kants

worry are mistaken.
In my own case, I felt I had to engage Kant. Most analytic philosophers who have engaged in philosophical theology in recent years have
not felt they had to. They have forged ahead without worrying over
questions concerning the possibility of the enterprise. The reason for
their indierence lies in a rather surprising consequence of the demise
of logical positivism. The topic of limits on thought, knowledge, and
speech, prominent in modern thought since Kant, has lost all interest
for philosophers in the analytic tradition (not so for philosophers in
the continental tradition). Analytic philosophers do on occasion charge
people with failing to think or speak sense. But it is now tacitly assumed
that such claims have to be defended on an ad hoc basis; analytic philosophers are skeptical to the point of being indierent to all grand limit
proposals. Philosophical theology is no longer enervated by the Kantian
anxiety.

Kant did not draw from his critical philosophy the skeptical conclusions
about theology in general that many have drawn and thought he drew.
He did not even draw the skeptical conclusions about rational theology
that many have drawn and thought he drew.
Kant did deny that we can have knowledge of God; many readers have
run with this and interpreted him as denying the possibility of theology.
But not so. Kant explained rational theology as diering from revelational theology in that the former is based solely upon reason; and it
was his view that a rational theology is possible. It is possible to arrive at
well-grounded conclusions about God on the basis of reason alone. From
the Critique of Practical Reason onward, a good deal of what Kant himself wrote would have been regarded by him as rational theology. He did
not regard it as knowledge, however. To understand why not, one has to
realize that knowledge (Wissen), as he used the term, was a term of art.
On his usage, a judgment constitutes knowledge only if it is related to
experience in a certain way; he was convinced that judgments about God
cannot be related in that way to experience.

Critique of Pure Reason, A = B. The passages I quote are all from Critique of Pure Reason,
A = B. I use the Norman Kemp Smith translation (New York: Macmillan & Co.,
).

Inquiring about God

Rational theology comes in two main forms, said Kant. In one form,
it thinks its object through pure reason, solely by means of transcendental concepts (ens originarium, realissimum, ens entium), in which case it
is entitled transcendental theology. In the other form, it thinks its object
through a concept borrowed from nature (from the nature of our soul)
a concept of the original being as a supreme intelligence and it would
then have to be called natural theology. Those who engage in the former
type of rational theology are called deists, says Kant; those who engage in
the latter type are called theists.
[Deists] grant that we can know the existence of an original being solely through
reason, but maintain that our concept of it is transcendental only, namely,
the concept of a being which possesses all reality, but which we are unable to
determine in any more specic fashion. [Theists] assert that reason is capable of
determining its object more precisely through analogy with nature, namely, as
a being which, through understanding and freedom, contains in itself the ultimate ground of everything else. Thus the deist represents this being merely as a
cause of the world the theist as the Author of the world.

Transcendental theology, or deism, in turn comes in two forms. In one

form, it proposes to deduce the existence of the original being from an
experience in general (without determining in any more specic fashion
the nature of the world to which the experience belongs), and is then
called cosmo-theology. Aquinas argumentation for Gods existence and
for Gods ontological attributes, in both his Summa contra Gentiles and
his Summa Theologiae, is an example of what Kant has in mind by cosmo-theology. The other form of transcendental theology holds that one
can know the existence of such a being through mere concepts, without
the help of any experience whatsoever, and is then entitled onto-theology.
Kant had in mind rational theology that begins with an ontological argument, such as Anselms.
Natural theology also comes in two forms. Natural theology infers the
properties and the existence of an Author of the world from the constitution, the order and unity, exhibited in the world a world in which we
have to recognize two kinds of causality with their rules, namely, nature
and freedom. From this world natural theology ascends to a supreme
intelligence, as the principle either of all natural or of all moral order and
perfection. In the former case it is entitled physico-theology, in the latter,
moral theology.
In the third and fourth essays in this collection I discuss and critically appraise two attempts at rational theology. In Conundrums in
Kants rational theology I discuss Kants attempt at rational theology

Introduction

of the moral theological type, as we nd it in his Religion within the

Boundaries of Reason Alone, coming to the conclusion that the attempt
fails at crucial junctures. In the essay, In defense of Gaunilos defense
of the fool, I discuss the opening argument in Anselms attempt at
rational theology of the onto-theological type, concluding that it too
fails.
I approach Anselms argument from a somewhat unusual angle. One
consequence of the combination of the extreme brevity of Anselms ontological argument for Gods existence with its highly provocative character is that, over the centuries, many philosophers have tried to improve
on his formulation of his argument. My own view is that most of these
improvements are suciently dierent from Anselms argument to
make it best to view them as alternative ontological arguments. There is
no such thing as the ontological argument; there is, instead, a large family of ontological arguments, Anselms being the original member of the
family.
For a good many years, when teaching Anselms argument, I too saw
myself as improving on his formulation. The earliest written criticism
of Anselms argument that we possess was written by his contemporary,
Gaunilo, and sent to Anselm for his response. I had my students read that
part of Gaunilos response in which Gaunilo claims that, by employing
the principles to which Anselm appeals in his argument, one could reach
the conclusion that there is a perfect island which is absurd. I then
undertook to explain to my students why Gaunilos perfect island argument was not analogous to Anselms argument.
But then one day it struck me that in his response to Gaunilo, Anselm
did not explain why the perfect island argument is not an analogue to
his argument for Gods existence; instead, he blustered. That made me
suspicious; so I undertook to study carefully the entire exchange. I was
led to conclude that though Gaunilo was certainly not a rst-rate philosophical mind and misunderstood Anselm on some points, nonetheless
he discerned well enough what Anselm was actually arguing to put his
nger on its fundamental aw. The essay, In defense of Gaunilos defense
of the fool, is thus a look at Anselms argument through the lens of his
exchange with Gaunilo.

The best-known recent example of an ontological argument is that presented by Alvin Plantinga
in God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, ). Plantinga makes a brief
attempt to show that he is getting at what Anselm had in mind; I do not nd the attempt convincing. My view is that Plantingas argument is not a reformulation of Anselms argument but a
new ontological argument.

Inquiring about God

Kant would not regard the remainder of the essays in this collection as
essays in rational theology, nor would he regard most of the writings I
have been calling analytic philosophical theology as rational theology.
For the same reason he would not regard them as philosophical theology.
He might regard them as theologia revelata Im not sure.
Why would he not regard them as rational theology, and thus not as
philosophical theology? Because he would not regard them as theology
based solely upon reason. Given what he meant by that, he would be
right; they are not theology based solely upon reason.
Kant did not explain what he meant by theology based solely upon
reason. But from his dierentiation of various types of theology that
he regards as based solely upon reason, we can make a good inference.
Theology is based solely upon reason, and is thus rational or philosophical theology, only if it is based solely on premises that all normal, adult,
appropriately informed human beings would accept if those premises
were presented to them and they understood them. Possibly Kant had
in mind additional restrictions on the sort of premises that theology may
employ if it is to be rational or philosophical theology; but at least this
restriction holds.
Many analytic philosophers of religion, myself included, engage in
the enterprise as religious believers without making or having made
any attempt to base our religious convictions on premises that all normal, adult, appropriately informed human beings would accept if those
premises were presented to them and they understood them. With respect
to a good many of our religious convictions we do not make, and have
not made, any attempt to base them on any premises whatsoever. So too,
many analytic philosophers who work in philosophy of mind enter the
discussion as committed physicalists without making or having made
any attempt to base their physicalist convictions on premises that all normal, adult, appropriately informed human beings would accept if those
premises were presented to them and they understood them.
This description of how analytic philosophers engage in philosophy
raises the obvious question, are they entitled to employ their Christian
convictions in this way, or their physicalist convictions, or whatever?
Are they not defecting from the high calling of the philosopher to base

I myself do not regard the last, Tertullians enduring question, as philosophical theology.

Introduction

philosophy solely upon reason? Kant would say they are defecting;
present-day philosophers assume they are not. Why the change?
The change in view concerning what might be called the epistemology
of philosophy reects dramatic changes in epistemology generally over the
past thirty years or so. Here is not the place to discuss those changes. Let
me simply say that most analytic philosophers operate on the assumption that little of interest would emerge if philosophers did in fact conne themselves to premises that all normal, adult, appropriately informed
human beings would accept if those premises were presented to them
and they understood them. There is no serious alternative to engaging in
philosophy employing considerations that one nds compelling but that
some of ones fellow philosophers do not. Philosophy has become a pluralist enterprise. Or rather, in spite of the self-perception of many philosophers, it always has been that.
But then why talk about philosophical theology? The term implies a
distinction between theology as developed by philosophers and theology
as developed by theologians between philosophical theology and theological theology. Kant was carrying on the tradition of distinguishing
the two by saying that philosophers appeal solely to reason whereas theologians appeal also to revelation. The now-current view among analytic
philosophers concerning the epistemology of philosophy makes that way
of distinguishing no longer applicable. The fact that someone views certain of his religious convictions as having their source in revelation does
not imply that appealing to those convictions in the course of his reections about God establishes that he is not engaged in philosophy.
I see no structural dierence between philosophical and theological
theology. In the West there is a distinct tradition and practice of philosophy, and a distinct tradition and practice of theology. Though these
two traditions and practices overlap, we are all able to pick out works
that clearly belong to one or the other. Whiteheads writings about God
belong to the tradition and practice of philosophy though theologians
not infrequently read and discuss them. John Calvins and Karl Barths
writings belong to the tradition and practice of theology though philosophers now and then read and discuss Calvin and Barth. Philosophical
theology is what emerges when someone engaged in the practice of
philosophy and carrying on its tradition turns his or her reections to
God. Anyone acquainted with the two traditions and practices, that of

I discuss them in several of the essays that will appear in another collection of mine, Practices of
Belief: Essays in Epistemology, Terence Cuneo, ed. (Cambridge University Press, ).

Inquiring about God

philosophy and that of theology, will recognize that the essays in this
collection are philosophical.


With the exception of the last essay, Tertullians enduring question, all
the essays, from the fth on, are essays in which I deal directly with one
or another of Gods attributes or with some aspect of Gods relation to the
world. I do so by engaging, in a certain way, the tradition of Christian
philosophical theology. Let me explain, beginning with an explanation
of what I have in mind by Christian philosophical theology, and then
explaining my particular mode of engagement with it. A happy consequence of overcoming the Kantian anxiety is that one can treat ones
pre-Kantian predecessors in philosophical theology as genuine dialogue
partners.
A prominent feature of how those philosophers who are Christians have
gone about developing philosophical theology is that they have required
of their reections that they cohere with what Christian Scripture claims
and presupposes about God.
Sometimes their reections have been directly on some aspect of what
Scripture claims about God. In my book Divine Discourse, for example,
I reect philosophically on the claim, running throughout Hebrew and
Christian Scripture, that God said so-and-so, and on the claim often
made about Christian Scripture that it is the word of the Lord. I was
aware that the biblical writers were not alone in claiming that God had
spoken to them or to someone they knew; so I realized that my reections had broader relevance than just to the claims of divine speech made
within and about Scripture. But in any case, I was not led by philosophical arguments to conclude that God speaks. I found this claim already
being made; and I decided to reect on it philosophically. It is, after all,
an intriguing and highly provocative claim.
By contrast, Aquinas arrived at the conclusion that God is ontologically immutable by employing what Kant would have classied as rational
theology of the cosmo-theological sort. (I discuss Aquinas line of argument for Gods immutability in the essay, God everlasting.) Aquinas
interpreted Scripture as claiming the very same thing, however; he held
that philosophical reasoning and Scriptural claim converge on this point.
So though it would be misleading to characterize Aquinas reections on
divine immutability as philosophical reections on the biblical claim that

Introduction

God is immutable, it would also not be correct to say that the role of
Scripture in his reections on immutability was merely to set boundaries
to his conclusions. He had independent philosophical reasons for holding
that God is immutable; but he would have insisted that his reections do
not merely cohere with Scripture but are a philosophical articulation of
Scriptures claim that God is immutable. So when I say that those philosophers who are Christians have required of their philosophical theology
that it cohere with what Scripture claims and presupposes about God, it
should not be inferred that the actual relationship has been no more than
coherence. Coherence is the minimum.
A fair number of philosophical theologians have felt no compunction
whatsoever to have their conclusions cohere with what Christian Scripture
claims and presupposes about God; Plotinus and Whitehead come to
mind. Conversely, many of those who have interpreted Scripture to nd
out what it claims and presupposes about God have had no interest in
reecting philosophically about God; many are in fact downright hostile
to philosophical theology. Christian philosophical theology is the challenging project of achieving an understanding of God that both coheres
with Scripture and is philosophically cogent.
Determining what Christian Scripture claims or assumes about God
is no simple task. Distinguish between how some passage of Scripture
presents God, what the writer (editor) of that passage was claiming or presupposing about God in thus presenting God, and what Scripture claims
and presupposes about God. What is directly before us when we read
Scripture is the rst; what we have to get to by interpretation is the last.
Some passages in Scripture present God as having wings; others present
God as a rock. No interpreter believes that the writers (editors) of these
passages were claiming or presupposing that God has wings or that God
is a rock. A passage may present God as a rock without the writer claiming or presupposing that God is a rock; that will be the case if is a rock
is being used metaphorically. Probably only completely dead metaphors
can be fully parsed out into some literal equivalent. But when some biblical writer presents God as a rock, what he is claiming, at least, is that God
is steadfast and reliable.

In my Divine Discourse (Cambridge University Press, ) I argue that it is not texts that claim
things, but authors (or editors) who claim things by way of authorizing a text, those claims then
having various presuppositions. I likewise hold that metaphor, hyperbole, etc., are not matters
of meaning but of use; authors (editors) use words metaphorically, hyperbolically, ironically, etc.
In apparent violation of these principles, I will speak of Scripture as claiming and presupposing
things about God. I speak thus so as to leave open the question of who it might be that is claiming and presupposing these things by way of the text of Scripture.

Inquiring about God

How do we decide whether some passage is to be interpreted literally or

metaphorically or hyperbolically, ironically, and so forth for all the other
literary tropes? In Divine Discourse I argued for a general principle: literal interpretation is always the default option. A writer or speaker is to
be interpreted as speaking literally as saying what his words mean
unless there is good reason to conclude otherwise. Knowing, as I do, that
Michael is not hallucinatory, I know that when he assertively uttered the
guy is a wolf, he was not saying (speaking literally now) that the man is
a wolf; he was speaking metaphorically. So too, we all know that when
some biblical writer said God is a rock, he was not saying (speaking
literally now) that God is a rock. Though non-literal interpretation always
carries the burden of proof, often that burden is borne successfully.
But what the writer (editor) of some biblical passage claimed or presupposed about God is not necessarily what Scripture claims or presupposes
about God. Christians for the most part have insisted that in interpreting Christian Scripture, we must go beyond treating it as a collection of
loosely strung-together pericopes, also go beyond treating it as an assemblage of some sixty-six separate books, and treat it as one work, highly
varied in its contents. And for the most part they have insisted that in
treating Christian Scripture as one work, we are to give priority to what
the Gospels and the Pauline letters say God was doing in Jesus Christ.
The combination of this principle of canonical unity with this principle of
interpretive priority will sometimes lead to the conclusion that what the
writer of some passage claimed or presupposed about God diers from
what Scripture claims or presupposes about God and that the latter
diers even more from how the passage presents God. Some passages in
the Old Testament present God as doing things (or as instructing human
beings to do things) that all of us, along with most biblical writers, would
regard as unjust. Yet all Christian interpreters interpret Scripture as teaching that God is just.
To get from how biblical passages present God to what Scripture claims
and presupposes about God, one must subtly and judiciously employ
complex interpretive strategies whose results often prove controversial.
That might seem to take all bite out of even the minimal requirement
of coherence cited above. If the philosophical theologian nds himself
led by philosophical considerations to conclusions that conict with how

In Divine Discourse I did not devote much attention to what goes into interpreting a body of writings as one work. I discuss the issues more fully in The Unity Behind the Canon, in Christine
Helmer and Christof Landmesser, eds., One Scripture or Many? Canon from Biblical, Theological,
and Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford University Press, ).

Introduction

some biblical passages present God, he doesnt have to choose between

surrendering his philosophically argued conclusions and tossing Scripture
out the window; he can insist that Scripture does not actually claim or
presuppose that God is the way those passages present God.
The situation is by no means as bleak as this abstract way of putting
it might make it seem, however. There are pervasive patterns in how
Scripture presents God. With respect to such patterns, it takes exceedingly powerful arguments to force one to conclude that this pattern of
presentation is not what Scripture claims or presupposes about God.
More about this shortly.


I have explained what I had in mind when I spoke of Christian philosophical theology. Let me now explain in what way I engage the tradition
of Christian philosophical theology.
In the opening twenty or thirty questions of Aquinas Summa
Theologiae, Christian philosophical theology attained one of its classical
formulations, both with respect to the attributes ascribed to God and with
respect to the line of argumentation for those attributes. Aquinas begins
the articulation of his philosophical theology in Question of Summa
Theologiae by arguing that reality is so structured that there has to be
something on which everything not identical with itself is dependent
something such that the existence and properties of everything other than
itself are dependent on it and such that its own existence and properties
are not dependent on anything other than itself. (I am blending the conclusions of the rst four of Aquinas ve ways.) Everybody agrees that
this being is God, says Aquinas. God uniquely possesses aseity.
In the same question in which he argues that reality is so structured
that there has to be something that uniquely possesses aseity, Aquinas also
argues that reality is so structured that there has to be some intelligent
being by whom all natural things are directed to their end. This too,
he says, we all call God. But the claim that God uniquely possesses aseity
proves sucient, by itself, for Aquinas to draw a long string of conclusions concerning Gods attributes. If God uniquely possesses aseity, then
God is also simple, perfect, immutable, eternal, omnipotent, impassible,

I am using the translation of the English Dominican Fathers (New York: Benziger Brothers,
).

Inquiring about God

and so forth. My engagement with the tradition of Christian philosophical theology mainly takes the form of engaging various components of
this classical formulation of philosophical theology, now and then bringing other gures into the picture in addition to Aquinas. (The essay on
Anselm is dierent in that there I engage the opening argument in a formulation of Christian philosophical theology which yields the conclusion
that God is that than which nothing more excellent is possible, rather
than the conclusion that God uniquely possesses aseity.)
One can engage philosophical theology in one or another of its classical formulations in a variety of dierent ways. If one nds oneself in basic
agreement with its line of argumentation and its conclusions, one can set
oneself the project of giving a deeper and richer account than ones predecessors gave of one and another attribute, and of dealing with puzzles and
objections better than they did. In contrast to engagement of this sort,
mine is a critical engagement. I have serious questions about various parts
of Christian philosophical theology in most of its classic formulations,
including its classic Thomistic formulation; I do not believe that God is
simple, ontologically immutable, eternal in the sense of being outside of
time, or impassible.
My argument against Anselms onto-theology is that the opening
move does not work; Anselms ontological argument is not sound. My
argument against the classic Thomistic formulation of philosophical
theology is dierent. I do not argue that Aquinas line of argument is
unacceptable simply qua rational theology of the cosmo-theological sort.
To the contrary, in Divine simplicity I defend Aquinas explanation of
divine simplicity against a number of philosophical objections that have
been lodged against it in recent years. And in the following essay, Alston
on Aquinas on theological predication, I argue that Aquinas solution to
the problem of how it can be that, if God is simple, our predications
about God are not all synonymous, has been widely misunderstood. On
Aquinas view, the term good applies literally and univocally to both
God and creatures, as do the terms powerful, knowledgeable, and
so forth. Aquinas does have a doctrine of analogy, as all commentators
agree; but that doctrine is not what it is commonly taken to be, namely,
that such terms as good and powerful apply only analogously to
both God and creatures.
My critical engagement takes the form of arguing that, on key points,
Christian philosophical theology of this and most other classic formulations fails to meet the requirement that it be compatible with what
Christian Scripture claims and presupposes about God. To those who

Introduction

do not accept that requirement Plotinians and Whiteheadians, for

example my arguments are irrelevant. But of course Aquinas did accept
that requirement, as have most others in the West who have engaged in
philosophical theology.
Many passages in Christian Scripture present God as the one who
saves us; we human beings cannot save ourselves from what we need saving from. We can do a good deal, but not enough. More specically, God
is presented in many passages as saving us not only by how God wraps
things up at the end, but also as saving us by acting salvically in human
history, centrally in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
For any philosophical theologian who identies herself as Christian, the
burden of proof will be on her if she nds herself inclined to believe that
in thus presenting God, Scripture is not claiming and presupposing that
God acts in history for our salvation but that the passages in question
must be interpreted guratively. That burden of proof will be unusually
hard to bear, since Scriptures presentation of God as saving us by acting
in history is not incidental but pervasive. It will be much harder to bear
than is, for example, the burden of proof one takes onto oneself when one
holds that the presentation of God in some passages as having wings must
be interpreted guratively.
Aquinas saw the problem and accepted the challenge, not by arguing that Scripture should be interpreted guratively on these points, but
by trying to explain Gods relationship to human wrongdoing in such
a way that Gods being impassible is compatible with Gods judgment
that there is something we need saving from, and by trying to explain
Gods relationship to historical events in such a way that Gods being
eternal is compatible with Gods acting in history for our salvation. In the
essays God everlasting and Unqualied divine temporality, I argue
that Aquinas was unsuccessful in the latter attempt; in Suering love
and Is God disturbed by what transpires in human aairs? I argue
that Aquinas, along with Augustine before him, was unsuccessful in the
former attempt.
In The silence of the God who speaks, I explain more amply than I
do in either of the two preceding articles what it is, in the claims and presuppositions of Christian Scripture about God, that makes the problem
of evil so dicult for Christian philosophers and theologians. And in the
article, Barth on evil, I discuss a fascinatingly dierent way of thinking
of evil from that which Augustine and Aquinas adopted in their attempt
to show the compatibility of divine impassibility with Gods judgment
that there is something we need saving from.

Inquiring about God

Barth identies evil as what he calls das Nichtige. We human beings

are dependent for our existence on Gods creating and sustaining activity. Were we brought into existence and then left on our own, we would
immediately slide out of existence. Non-existence is thus das Nichtige,
that is, a menace that God must constantly oppose if we are to exist.
Furthermore, once God has created us as the sort of creatures we are and
established what God desires for us, then perforce God has also brought
about the possibility of our not doing and undergoing what God desires
for us. This possibility is also das Nichtige, also a menace to us. Not only
are we menaced by this possibility; God permits us to fall prey to this
menace, while yet doing battle against its incursion into our existence.
God is not impassible.
My critique of Augustine and Aquinas on the issue of divine impassibility leaves open the possibility that someone else has been successful
in showing coherence with Scripture where they were not. I know of none
such. Nor do I know of anyone who, agreeing that eternity and impassibility are incompatible with Scriptures presentation of God as savior, has
oered such compelling philosophical arguments against the existence of
a God who judges that there is something we need saving from, and who
acts in history to accomplish that salvation, that either we must interpret
this feature of the biblical presentation as a gurative way of saying something else, or toss out this biblical presentation of God as irredeemably
wrongheaded.
If Aquinas is right in his argument and I think he is that aseity implies simplicity, that simplicity implies immutability, and that
immutability implies eternity and impassibility, then giving up eternity
and impassibility implies giving up immutability, simplicity, and aseity.
Likewise it implies that there is something mistaken in Aquinas argument for Gods aseity, and in all other arguments that philosophers have
oered for the same conclusion. I have not myself written a critique of
these arguments, however. They have been so extensively discussed and
criticized over the centuries that I have found myself with nothing new
to say.

The reader who is looking for a fully developed philosophical theology
will nd this collection disappointing. I would very much like to have
a fully developed philosophical theology, both for my own satisfaction
and to oer to others for their consideration. But this collection is not

Introduction

that, nor is it that when paired with my Divine Discourse. I say nothing
about such important and much-discussed topics as the nature of Gods
knowledge and Gods power; I do not discuss the Trinity. And my contribution to the topics I do discuss could rightly be described as piecemeal and mostly negative. I argue that God is not simple, not outside of
time, not ontologically immutable, not impassible. We would like to hear
something positive on these topics; and we would like to see those positive contributions assembled into a comprehensive understanding of God
which is an alternative to that found in Aquinas classic formulation, and
indeed, an alternative to that found in all other classic formulations. This
collection gives reasons for rejecting the classic formulations; in so doing,
it gives some indication of what an alternative formulation would be like.
But it scarcely goes beyond that.
I would guess that it is my purely negative treatment of the traditional
doctrine of Gods aseity that will leave readers most dissatised. If simplicity, eternity, ontological immutability, and impassibility all have to
go, then aseity also has to go. But surely God is not a hapless victim. So
what should replace aseity?
If God uniquely possessed aseity, then not only the existence but also
the properties of everything other than God would be dependent on God,
while the existence and properties of God would not be dependent on
anything other than God. I agree that, in one way or another, the existence of everything other than God is dependent on God, whereas God
is not dependent on anything other than Godself for Gods existence. I
likewise agree that, in one way or another, entities other than God having
the properties they do have are dependent on God. My disagreement is
with the claim that Gods having the properties God does have is never
dependent on anything other than God.
I hold, for example, that God has been wronged by us that being
wronged by us is one of the things that characterizes God. God has this
property on account of our having wronged God; had we not wronged
God, God would not have this property. Thus Gods having that property
is dependent on us. I likewise hold that God is disturbed by our wronging God, as God is disturbed by our wronging each other. God reacts
negatively to such wrongings. Though someone might undertake to argue
that being wronged by me at a certain time does not represent a genuine
change in God from how God was before the wronging took place, no
one will undertake to argue that being disturbed by my wronging God does
not represent a change in God from how God was before God was disturbed. And as I argue in God everlasting, no one should undertake

Inquiring about God

to argue that Gods knowledge, that God is now being wronged by me,
does not represent a genuine change in God from how God was before I
wronged God.
Barth held that God chooses to let Godself be disturbed by our actions
and chooses to save us from what we need saving from; God might have
remained sovereignly aloof, says Barth. I am dubious. I think that once
God made us as creatures who have the worth of bearing the image of
God, then certain ways of treating us are required of God on pain of
wronging us; God could not remain aloof. And I think that once God
made us as creatures capable of wronging God and each other, and did
not prevent us from doing exactly that, then too God could not remain
aloof. The relevant choice goes farther back in the life of God. The situation is not that, having made us, God then faced the choice of whether
or not to remain sovereignly aloof. God did not have to create us as the
sort of creatures that we are and permit us to wrong God; thats where the
choice lay. In creating us as the sort of creatures we are, creatures of great
worth but capable of wronging God, and in permitting us to wrong God,
God chose to be passible, thereby also choosing to give up aseity.

The collection concludes with an essay of quite a dierent sort, Tertullians
enduring question. A question raised by all the preceding essays is how
we should deal with the texts of our predecessors. Tertullian, so I argue,
represents one way; his near-contemporary, Clement of Alexandria, represents a very dierent way. The intellectual tradition of the West has been
a never-ending contest between these two ways. I leave it to the reader to
determine on whose side I come down.
Let me close on a personal note by oering my warm thanks to Terence
Cuneo for the work he has put into editing this volume. He has been a
superb editor. Indeed, without his prodding, this collection would probably never have come about.

Analytic philosophy of religion: retrospect

and prospect

My project in this essay is to oer a broad characterization of recent

philosophy of religion in the analytic tradition of contemporary philosophy, then to oer an account of how it got that way and, nally, to oer
some proposals for the future. Not predictions, but proposals.
I will assume that the reader knows, well enough for the purposes
at hand, what I am referring to when I speak of the analytic tradition
of contemporary philosophy. In particular, I will assume that the reader
has not fallen for that supercial but popular view that what denes
the analytic tradition is the high priority given to rigor of thought
and clarity of expression. Defenders of the analytic tradition often cite
those priorities as among its glories; opponents cite the same priorities
as making it trivial. And its true that analytic philosophers have given
an unusually high priority to rigor of thought and clarity of expression. But their reasons for doing so have not been reasons of taste but
of philosophical conviction; those reasons are of more importance than
the valuation itself.
My own view is that the identity of the analytic tradition is a narrative,
rather than a purely systematic, identity. What makes a philosopher an
analytic philosopher is that he places himself within a certain story line of
philosophy in the twentieth century. Of course one may try, in ones own
work, to amalgamate story lines. Among prominent philosophers, thats
been especially true, I would say, of Paul Ricoeur and Jrgen Habermas.
To what extent they have avoided mere eclecticism and achieved genuine
amalgamation is a nice question. But be that as it may, the story line of
analytic philosophy is full of fundamental controversy and innovation;
thats why attempts to identify the tradition in a purely systematic way
prove not illuminating. What makes a person an analytic philosopher is,
in good measure, his or her ownership of a certain line of inuence and
controversy.

Inquiring about God

But enough said: as already mentioned, my judgment is that the reader

will know, well enough for the purposes at hand, what is the analytic
tradition within contemporary philosophy, and that no purpose would be
served by taking the time to try to say anything beyond the generalizations already oered.


On the American scene, analytic philosophy of religion occurs almost
exclusively within philosophy departments. Since most religious studies
departments also teach philosophy of religion, one would expect it to
occur there as well. But not so. For the most part, those who practice
philosophy of religion in religious studies departments do so within the
contemporary continental tradition.
Let me now venture the guess that of all the aspects of analytic
philosophy that those who work within the contemporary continental
tradition of philosophy nd baing about such philosophy, its analytic
philosophy of religion that they nd most baing. One of my aims will
be to reduce this sense of baement by bringing about some degree of
comprehension.
Those who stand in the continental tradition of philosophy regularly highlight three things as baing, even o-putting, about analytic
philosophy of religion over the past quarter century. One of these is the
fact that most analytic philosophers of religion simply take metaphysical
realism for granted, including metaphysical realism concerning God; they
appear, from the perspective of the continental philosopher, never to have
reected on the fact that our concepts reach all the way down. A second
baing and o-putting feature is their epistemological condence concerning our ability to gain knowledge of God: these philosophers seem
never to have read their Kant, so it is said not, at least, with comprehension and empathy. And thirdly, whats baing and o-putting about
recent analytic philosophers of religion is that almost all of them appear
to be theological conservatives. Not only are most of them quite obviously
theists; they are also theists of a rather traditional sort. Suspicion and critique are almost entirely missing. Or more precisely: suspicion and critique are more often aimed at the critics of religion than at religion itself.
To at least some who stand in the continental tradition of philosophy, it
appears that the analytic philosophers of religion are failing in their high
calling as philosophers to ask what reason has to say about religion, and

Analytic philosophy of religion: retrospect and prospect

then to listen to reasons voice. Rather than being philosophers, they are,
at bottom, defenders of the faith using the tools of philosophy!
These, I say, are the things that philosophers from the continental
tradition regularly say about contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. It seems to me that in thus speaking, they have their eye on some of
the most important features of this tradition in philosophy of religion. I
would say, however, that with respect to the second and the third points,
theres considerable distortion involved in their statement of the point. So
let me formulate for myself these three features.
In the rst place, most recent analytic philosophers of religion do
indeed take metaphysical realism concerning the external world and the
self for granted and also realism concerning God. A corollary of this is
that there has been a great owering of philosophical theology philosophical reections about God among these philosophers. Second, one
of the major preoccupations of recent philosophy of religion in the analytic tradition has been epistemology. Even the much-discussed problem
of evil, for example, has for the most part been treated as an epistemological issue. Epistemology has been hegemonic. Furthermore, part of what
accounts for the impression the continental person has of epistemological
condence and theological conservatism is that the stand most analytic
philosophers of religion take concerning the various doxastic merits
knowledge, warrant, entitlement, justication, rationality, etc. is that a
good many religious beliefs as they come possess these merits. They dont
have to be supported, defended, stripped down, or whatever, in order to
possess them. Thirdly, most analytic philosophers of religion over the past
quarter century have been what I would call perspectival particularists
in their understanding of how philosophy is to be practiced; they were
of this conviction well before deconstructionism melodramatically came
to the same conclusion on its own anti-realist grounds. The majority of
recent analytic philosophers of religion have not supposed that one could
or should practice philosophy as a generic human being, appealing solely
to reason. They have regarded philosophy in general, not just philosophy of religion, as in good measure and in various ways an articulation
of ones own particular perspective. That is why these philosophers have
neither tried to shed nor to conceal the religious convictions that they
bring to philosophy; and that is why they have not attempted to discover
some perch above the fray from which they could, qua purely rational
beings, practice suspicion and lodge critique. They have not only been
willing to describe religion from within; they have practiced philosophy of
religion from within.

Inquiring about God

How did recent analytic philosophy of religion acquire these characteristics? That is the question I want now to address. I concede that analytic
philosophy in general often wears a completely ahistorical face; I likewise
concede that, until this same past quarter century, its interest in the history of philosophy and its competence at dealing with that history were
minimal. But analytic philosophy came from somewhere; that is to say,
from somewhere in history. Its not the product of a shaft of light darted
unexpectedly into our existence by the keepers of the Platonic ideas. It
has historical antecedents.
To the nding of historical antecedents there is, of course, no
end: antecedents have antecedents, those have antecedents; and so forth.
But I would say that the best place to begin the story that leads up to contemporary analytic philosophy of religion is with the philosophers of the
latter third of the seventeenth century, and with their eighteenth-century
successors. Among those philosophers there emerged an ideal that, in my
judgment, sets the agenda for the next three centuries of philosophical
reections on religion. No doubt Maimonides was a great and inuential
philosopher of religion. But what he said is not part of the philosophical
memory of the contemporary analytic philosopher of religion. Not so for
Locke, Hume, and Kant, along with a number of lesser gures: Butler,
Paley, and so forth.
When I say that what happened there set the agenda for the next three
centuries, I do not mean that the history of the past three centuries is
the history of agreement with those great predecessors; many of us disagree with them on fundamental issues. I mean that their basic questions
remain for us live questions; and that their answers remain provocative
and challenging. Either we try to answer their questions, whether in the
way they themselves answered them or some other way; or we try to show
that theyre bad questions and should not be answered. We dont ignore
them.
What is that ideal that emerged in the eighteenth century and the latter part of the seventeenth? The ideal of a rationally grounded religion.
No doubt a similar ideal had arisen among the Greek philosophers of the
classic period. But this ideal was something new in the Christian West.
Among the medieval philosophers and theologians one nds the ideal of
a scientic theology that is, the ideal of a theology so constructed as to
satisfy the criteria for a scientia. But when I say that in the late seventeenth

Analytic philosophy of religion: retrospect and prospect

century and on into the eighteenth there emerged the ideal of a rationally
grounded religion, I have something dierent in mind than the ideal of a
scientic theology.
A rationally grounded religion was presented as an ideal for everyone,
not just for professional theologians and philosophers. Furthermore, the
ideal was not that of everyone becoming a theologian or philosopher, be it
amateur or professional; it was the ideal of everyone becoming a rational
religious believer. It was an ideal for everybody, not just for the intellectual elite; and it was an ideal concerning religion, not concerning the
construction of theology.
The two great articulators of this new cultural ideal were Locke and
Kant. My thesis will be that one of the reasons philosophers in the contemporary continental tradition nd present-day analytic philosophy of
religion so baing and o-putting is that analytic philosophy of religion stands in the tradition shaped by Locke, rather than in the tradition
shaped by Kant.
It was in the context of the intellectual crisis of the seventeenth century
in England and central and northwest Europe that the ideal emerged of a
rationally grounded religion. The texts handed down to the intellectuals
of medieval Western Europe were, to our eyes, extraordinarily diverse in
their contents: Christian Scripture, Greek and Latin church fathers, classic Greek antiquity, Greco-Roman late antiquity, including Stoic and neoPlatonic texts, and so forth. But for the most part, this diversity caused
the high medievals no particular anxiety. Education, let us recall, was
largely text-based. And rather than highlighting what to our eyes are ruptures and dissonances in their textual inheritance, the medieval philosophers and theologians, without denying the strains, typically treated their
textual inheritance, with the exception of a few blatantly heretical texts,
as all together embodying a vast system of highly articulated wisdom.
Nobody supposed that this body of texts composed by human beings was
infallible; the claim was only that it contained wisdom. The challenge of
the interpreter was to extract the wisdom embedded in the textual tradition, and then to build upon it.
By the time of John Locke, in the mid-seventeenth century, few if any
embraced any longer this picture of the textual inheritance. Few if any
believed any longer that the textual heritage contained just a few heretical
texts, these embraced only by marginal groups such as the Bogomils in the
former Yugoslavia. Everybody now believed that the textual inheritance
contained a vast number of heretical texts. Dierent people, however, had

Inquiring about God

distinctly dierent views as to which texts were heretical; one persons

heresy was anothers orthodoxy. And those who embraced what their
own party regarded as heresy were not o somewhere at the margins of
Europe; they were right there at the center, struggling with their own
party for dominance, often with power at their disposal. Protestants had
initially insisted that the way out of this morass was to take the biblical
text alone as authoritative; already by the mid-sixteenth century, conictual pluralism had erupted over interpretation of the biblical text. A battle
of texts was taking place.
It was in this context that the ideal of a rationally grounded religion
arose among John Locke and certain of his cohorts. To understand the
ideal, one has to realize that in his mature thinking, Locke was always
operating with the contrast between tradition and nature: diverse human
traditions versus shared human nature. No matter how dierent the traditions of human thought that you and I represent dierent authoritative texts, dierent religious and intellectual heroes, dierent conceptual
frameworks, dierent religious practices no matter how dierent, we
remain human beings sharing a common human nature. Let us then,
when it comes to matters of God, duty, and civic life, build on what we
share in common qua human beings rather than on what divides us.
What might it be in human nature that is capable of providing us
with the principles for shared convictions about God, duty, and civic
life? Reason, said Locke; listen to the voice of Reason. What does that
mean? In Lockes hands it meant formulating and defending a version
of what has come to be called classical foundationalism. When considering whether to accept a certain proposition, one is rst to collect a
satisfactory body of evidence consisting of items that are certain for one;
that done, one is to calculate the probability of the proposition on that
evidence; then, nally, one is to believe or disbelieve with a rmness proportioned to that previously determined probability.
Lockes views on what constituted certainty were likewise important
and inuential. Locke was a representative of what Reid called the Way
of Ideas. On this view, the only entities with which we have acquaintance that is, the only entities that can be presented to us are mental
entities. There is in fact a vast range of reality outside the mind of each of
us; in Locke, there is not so much as a whi of metaphysical anti-realism
concerning the external world. But our knowledge of external reality

I explore Lockes views in detail in John Locke and the Ethics of Belief (Cambridge University
Press, ).

Analytic philosophy of religion: retrospect and prospect

can be gained only by way of inference. Locke himself was no skeptic

concerning the possibility of gaining such knowledge. Whats especially
relevant to our purposes is that he was convinced that it is possible, by the
construction of deductive arguments, to gain knowledge of Gods existence, along with a fair amount of knowledge concerning Gods nature
and ways with humankind. Such arguments begin from each persons
knowledge of his or her existence. They are, in that way, a species of cosmological arguments.
Kant shared with Locke the ideal of a rationally grounded religion
though what exactly, on Kants view, should be the stance of the ordinary
person toward that ideal, is less than clear. Locke held that everybody is
under obligation to employ the practice he proposed when it comes to
matters of religion; everybody is obligated to acquire a rational religion.
Whether Kant was also of the view that everybody is under obligation to
pursue the ideal of a rationally grounded religion is, as I say, not clear. Be
that as it may, however, in Kant too one nds this ideal articulated.
Kants version of that ideal was signicantly dierent from Lockes,
however. That dierence was due, above all, to a dierence over what I
shall call, for want of a better word, fundamental metaphysics. Deep
and pervasive in Kants thought is the image of a boundary. The boundary in question can be looked at from several dierent angles; perhaps the
most important is that it is a boundary for knowledge.
Reality puts in its appearance to us in the form of the intuitional content of our minds. If it is to do so, the intuitions must be structured by us
in various ways. For one thing, they must be subjected to the formal structure of space and time. Secondly, they must be conceptually structured.
As to this latter, one of Kants most imaginative moves was to argue that
the very same intuitional content that can be structured with the conceptual scheme of subjectivity can also, in good part, be structured with
the conceptual scheme of spatio-temporal objectivity. The reality of tables
and chairs consists, at bottom, of our conceptualizing certain of our intuitions as perceptions of enduring tables and chairs. Kant was thus, in his
own way, an anti-realist concerning the external spatio-temporal world
but a realist concerning transcendent reality.
The boundary, of which I spoke, is for one thing the boundary between
the intuitional content of the human mind and what lies beyond it. But
since that intuitional content of the mind consists of how reality puts in
its appearance to us, the boundary is also the boundary between transcendent reality and the appearance thereof. Likewise it is the boundary between that which is spatio-temporally structured and that which

Inquiring about God

is not. And since it is Kants doctrine that the function of concepts is

exclusively to conceptualize the manifold of intuitions, the boundary is
also the boundary between that to which our concepts apply and that to
which they do not.
And what then is to be said about that reality which puts in its appearance to us? The factuality of the empirical self and world gives us no
ground for saying anything at all about the trans-empirical; strictly
speaking, it does not even give us ground for saying that empirical reality
consists of the appearance to us of trans-empirical reality. Morality and
morality alone gives us a basis for speaking of what lies beyond the boundary with something more than ungrounded speculation or nonsense.
Specically, all that can be said about the trans-empirical must be
inferred from the fact that we human beings live under obligation
categorical obligation. The rst and foremost thing to be inferred is that
there is a self behind the empirical scene a noumenal self, capable of free
agency. Secondly, if anything is to be inferred about God, that inference
will have to be mediated by conclusions drawn about the noumenal self.
It would not be correct to say that Kants philosophy of religion just is a
branch of anthropology; what would be right to say is that it is all anthropologically based. And this remains an abiding feature of all Kantian
approaches to philosophy of religion: everything to be said about God
must be derived from reections on the human self.
Kants own argumentation went as follows: a rational religion will
consist of rationally grounded beliefs starting from the fact that we must
understand ourselves, in our trans-empirical reality, to be free agents under
obligation. It must be conceded that such rationally grounded beliefs
about the divine do not constitute knowledge; knowledge is limited to
what is or could be an object of intuitional acquaintance. Nonetheless, it
is possible to construct rationally compelling arguments about the divine,
starting from data concerning our moral existence. God is a component
of that ultimate reality that puts in its appearance to us. In the formulation of the conclusions to such arguments one makes use of a scheme
of quasi-concepts. True concepts, as already mentioned, are conned in
their function to unifying the manifold of intuitions. But from these true
concepts we can derive quasi-concepts by abstracting from them everything having to do with space and time. Whats left after this abstraction
has taken place can then be used to think and speak of the transcendent.
I judge the situation in philosophy today to be that the deep and wideranging dispute over Kants fundamental metaphysics has never been
resolved to the satisfaction of both parties. Is there the boundary that

Analytic philosophy of religion: retrospect and prospect

Kant claims there is? If there is, is it true that all rationally grounded
beliefs about what lies over the boundary will have to start from something about the self we know? And is it furthermore true that the upshot
of developing such rationally grounded beliefs is Kants peculiar blend
of anti-realism (idealism) concerning empirical reality, with realism concerning the transcendent self and God? By no means all philosophers
after Kant accept his philosophy of the boundary. To say it again: the
argument has never been settled to the satisfaction of both parties.
In the meanwhile, we live with self-serving caricatures by each party of
the other: the boundary philosopher regards the non-boundary philosopher as naive; the latter regards the former as muddled. But let me speak
for a moment as a non-boundary philosopher: the situation is not that we
have failed to consider the Kantian alternative, and are consequently still
wandering about in unenlightened naivet; the situation is rather that we
have considered the Kantian arguments and found them wanting. Kant is
not some fact of nature with whom one has no choice but to cope.
A century ago, it would have appeared likely that idealism, of the
Hegelian type, would be the dominating force in Anglo-American philosophy for a good time to come. Powerfully argued forms of idealism
were rapidly replacing somewhat mindless versions of Scottish Common
Sense philosophy. But due largely to the interventions of Moore and
Russell, thats not how things turned out. Shortly after it gained ascendancy, idealism was beaten back in the English-speaking world; the metaphysical realism that had traditionally dominated anglophone philosophy
recovered its composure. The origins of analytic philosophy lie in that
realist intervention by Moore and Russell. By now, various philosophers
located within the analytic tradition have espoused versions of idealism,
and of Kantian-style blends of empirical idealism with trans-empirical
realism another illustration of the fact that the identity of the analytic
tradition is a narrative rather than a systematic identity. Nonetheless, it
remains the case that the analytic tradition, in its metaphysical orientation, is dominantly opposed to both of these. And that, then, is the main
factor accounting for the thoroughgoing metaphysical realism of most
recent analytic philosophers of religion. Such philosophers neither accept
the Kantian boundary and its metaphysical implications nor do they
accept the Hegelian argument that things are a certain way only relative
to our conceptual schemes.
One might, however, be a metaphysical realist in ones orientation,
accepting neither Hegelian idealism nor the Kantian blend of empirical
idealism with trans-empirical realism concerning the self and God, while

Inquiring about God

yet adopting a theistically anti-realist construal of thought and speech

about God. Of course, if one concedes that the thought and speech in
question are really about God, one cannot then go on to adopt a theistically anti-realist construal of it. So let me put the point more felicitously: one might be a metaphysical realist in ones general orientation,
while yet adopting a theistically anti-realist construal of God-thought
and God-talk. How, then, did it come about that recent philosophy of
religion in the analytic tradition is so dominantly realist in its construal
of God-thought and God-talk?
That came about, I would say, as the aftermath of logical positivism
and its collapse. The positivists, for the most part, were denitely metaphysical realists rather than idealists; its not the case that things exist
only relative to our conceptual schemes. When it came to God-talk,
however, they were amboyantly anti-realist. God-talk is cognitively
meaningless talk. Whatever import it might have, it makes no factual
claims no claims on how things are. Wittgenstein exploited the opening oered by the positivists. While agreeing that religious language
makes no factual claims, he insisted nonetheless that the beliefs to which
such language gives expression go deep in human existence. Nothing so
sparked Wittgensteins anger as interpretations of religious belief that
make it appear silly or primitive. If an interpretation of religious belief
makes it appear thus, that, for Wittgenstein, was sucient indication that
the interpretation was mistaken.
By twenty-ve years ago, logical positivism had collapsed from its own
internal diculties. A consequence of that collapse was that for most philosophers in the analytic tradition, and for all except the Wittgensteinians
who practiced philosophy of religion within that tradition, there seemed
no longer to be any reason to embrace a theistically anti-realist interpretation of God-thought and God-talk. It may be that religious beliefs are
false that is to say, that their propositional content is false. But they
do have propositional content; few philosophers in the analytic tradition
would any longer dispute that.
Another consequence of the collapse of positivism that is important for
our purposes is that in recent years there has been a owering of ontology
and metaphysics within the analytic tradition. Its typical of those outside
philosophy to have gotten the impression that contemporary philosophy
in general, and analytic philosophy in particular, is hostile to ontology
and metaphysics. Nothing could be farther from the truth when it comes
to analytic philosophy. Logical positivism denitely cast a chill over the
enterprise. But when positivism collapsed, the impulses toward ontology

Analytic philosophy of religion: retrospect and prospect

and metaphysics that had been present in the analytic tradition from its
very beginnings reasserted themselves. In this respect, the relative prominence of ontological and metaphysical concerns in recent analytic philosophy of religion witness the prominence of ontological concerns in the
philosophical theology being practiced is a reection of such concerns
in analytic philosophy generally.
As I read the history of the matter, the disappearance of positivism from
the scene not only goes a long way toward accounting for the theistically
realist commitment of most recent analytic philosophy of religion, and a
long way toward accounting for the interest in ontology and metaphysics
which has gone along with that. It also goes a long way toward accounting for its deep preoccupation with epistemology specically, with the
epistemology of religious belief. The Wittgensteinian, in his polemic with
the positivists, held that what dierentiates God-talk from other types
of speech is not that it gives expression to beliefs about a transcendent
realm of fact, but that it gives expression to a certain way of interpreting
and valuing ones ordinary experience the religious way. That interpretation meant, perforce, that if the Wittgensteinian was to talk about religious belief, he had to talk about the role of religious belief and speech in
life; there was, on his view, nothing else for him to talk about. But when
positivism collapsed, and philosophers of religion who were in general
metaphysical realists found themselves with no good reason not to extend
their realism to include God-thought and God-talk, they found themselves facing head-on an epistemological challenge to religious belief that
for centuries had been a prominent component in the intellectual culture
of the modern West, replaced there only for a short time by the rather
dierent challenge to religious belief issued by logical positivism. I refer
to the challenge issued by John Locke, to the eect that its the obligation
of everyone whatsoever to see to it that his or her religion is a rational
religion to see to it that whatever religious beliefs she may have are held
on good evidence. In other words, I suggest that if we want to understand
the preoccupation of recent analytic philosophy of religion with epistemology, we must look to intellectual culture, and to its embrace of that
ideal of a rational religion of which I spoke earlier.
When faced with a challenge such as Lockes evidentialist challenge to
religious belief, one can obviously either accept the challenge or reject it.
If one accepts the challenge, one can then either try to meet it, or one can
declare the challenge victorious and religious belief untenable. In turn,
if one tries to meet the challenge, one can try to do so in either of two
ways, or a combination thereof: one can try to assemble evidence for the

Inquiring about God

religious beliefs one does have, or one can trim ones beliefs until they do
not go beyond the evidence one nds oneself to have.
I think it safe to say that almost no one who is today engaged in analytic philosophy of religion accepts the Lockean evidentialist challenge.
Some would accept one or another severely qualied version of it; but
almost no one would accept it in the unqualied form in which Locke
issued it. Almost no one would hold that it is the obligation of everybody,
if they are religious at all, to see to it that their religion is rational by virtue
of being based on evidence consisting of certitudes. This new situation,
beyond doubt, is mainly the result of so-called Reformed epistemology.
What made the emergence of Reformed epistemology possible was the
emergence, around the same time, of meta-epistemology, and the identication, which meta-epistemology in turn made possible, of classical
foundationalism as one among many alternative accounts of the conditions under which our beliefs possess one or another such merit as warrant,
entitlement, justication, and so forth. To speak autobiographically for a
moment: its clear to me now, in retrospect, that my own graduate school
training in epistemology simply took classical foundationalism for granted,
and worried over issues that arose within that particular theory. The fact
that meta-epistemology had not yet emerged made it impossible to gain
that degree of epistemological self-consciousness that now is common.
The relevance of meta-epistemology to the emergence of Reformed
epistemology is this: the Reformed epistemologists discerned that
Lockes issuance of his evidentialist challenge to religious belief
depended essentially on his classical foundationalism. According to the
classical foundationalist, religious beliefs, or more specically, theistic
beliefs, are not of the sort that can appear in the foundation; if they
are to appear in a scheme of warranted beliefs, entitled beliefs, justied beliefs, or whatever, they will have to appear in the superstructure,
not in the foundation which is just to say that they will require the
support of non-theistic beliefs that do qualify for the foundation. But
if classical foundationalism proves unacceptable, then this whole way
of looking at things shakes and topples unless, of course, one can
quickly replace it with some other epistemological structure that, mirabile dictu, does the same work.
The Reformed epistemologists were already dubious of the validity of Lockes evidentialist challenge to religious belief; it was their recognition that Lockes challenge depended essentially on his classical
foundationalism that led them then to attack classical foundationalism,
with devastating results. We are now a long way from those initial, almost

Analytic philosophy of religion: retrospect and prospect

exclusively negative, polemical forays. William P. Alston has since published his Perceiving God, in which he argues that a good many beliefs
about God are rationally held not because the person has Lockean-style
arguments for the belief, but because the person holding the belief has
experienced God. Alvin Plantingas Warranted Christian Belief has
made its appearance; Plantinga argues that a good many beliefs about
God have the status of knowledge even though the believer does not have
Lockean-style arguments in favor of them. And in sections of my Giord
Lectures, I argue, similarly, that many beliefs about God for which one
does not have Lockean-style arguments are nonetheless entitled. Using
rational as a catch-all word for the various truth-relevant doxastic merits, one could say this: religious beliefs can be rational without being rationally grounded. The fundamental signicance of Reformed epistemology
is, thus, that it denies the fundamental premise of Enlightenment philosophy of religion, shared alike by Locke and those in his tradition, and
by Kant and those in his.
It is partly these results that those who speak of the gullibility of analytic philosophers of religion have in mind; it is partly these results that
lead them to accuse the analytic philosophers of religion of failure to be
suspicious and to launch critique. But its not the claim of the Reformed
epistemologists that religious beliefs are impervious to critique. Quite
to the contrary; they insist that a good many of the religious beliefs of a
good many people are not justied, are not rational, are not entitled, are
not warranted, and so forth. What they reject is classically foundationalist accounts of these merits. They reject the swashbuckling insistence that
religious beliefs are lacking in doxastic merit if the believer does not hold
those beliefs on the basis of yet other beliefs that provide evidence for the
religious beliefs and are themselves certain. Why must they be held on
the basis of any other beliefs, be those other beliefs certain or not?
Those who accuse the analytic philosophers of religion of epistemological gullibility probably have their eye on something more in this
philosophical development than just the rejection of the ideal of a rationally grounded religion. They probably also have their eye on the obvious
condence, of the analytic philosophers of religion, that by argumentation we can learn something about God that it is possible to engage in
philosophical theology. The rejection of Kantianism is here at its most
striking. In the analytic philosophers of religion there is nothing like that

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, .

Oxford University Press, .
Practices of Belief: Essays in Epistemology, Terence Cuneo, ed. (Cambridge University Press, ).

Inquiring about God

powerful Kantian image of an epistemological boundary, and nothing

like the metaphysical and epistemological conclusions drawn from it. The
analytic philosopher of religion does indeed exclaim with Anselm, I do
not endeavor, Lord, to attain Your lofty heights, because my understanding is in no way equal to it. But I do desire to understand Your truth a little, that truth that my heart believes and loves. But it is the sublimity of
God that limits our understanding, not some epistemological boundary
between the phenomenal and the noumenal discovered by philosophical
reections on human nature and its powers.
The mention of Anselm leads me to observe that the ourishing of analytic philosophy of religion over the past quarter century has been accompanied by a comparable ourishing, during this same period, of studies
in the medieval philosophers and theologians. That these developments
should happen concurrently is, in my judgment, no accident. The analytic philosophers of religion have discovered, in the medieval philosophers and theologians, stimulating conversation partners. That discovery
has stimulated the study of the medievals and, in turn, the study of the
medievals has remarkably deepened the reections of our contemporary
philosophers of religion.
The rejection of classical foundationalism has had recursive eects
on the understanding of philosophy itself, not just on the philosophers
understanding of what is legitimate and what is illegitimate in religious
belief. Just as Locke, Kant, and the bulk of their Enlightenment cohorts
believed that religion should be rationally constructed on the basis of our
shared human nature, rather than on the basis of our particular traditions, so too they believed that Wissenschaft should be a product of our
shared human nature. In the construction of Wissenschaft we are to leave
behind our parochial traditions and engage in the disciplines simply as
generic human beings. Philosophy, along with all the other disciplines, is
to be a product of our shared humanity not of our German humanity,
not of our Christian humanity, not of our female humanity, not of our
African-American humanity, just of our generic humanity.
Without taking time here to trace out the paths and connections, let
me observe that the same epistemological self-consciousness, made possible by the emergence of meta-epistemology, which resulted in doubt
being cast on the evidentialist challenge to religious belief, also resulted in
doubt being cast on the regnant understanding of the academic enterprise

Quoted from Anselm of Canterbury : The Major Works, translated and edited by Brian Davies and
G. R. Evans (Oxford University Press, ), .

Analytic philosophy of religion: retrospect and prospect

as requiring us to extricate ourselves from our particular traditions and

frameworks of conviction so as to conduct ourselves as generic human
beings. It is this new picture of the academic enterprise that in large
measure accounts for the particularist character of so much analytic philosophy of religion. Those who engage in analytic philosophy of religion
are for the most part adherents to some particular religion; that, I have
no doubt, is why most of them nd the topics absorbing. Most of them
realize that such adherence shapes, in one way or another, what they do.
They make no eort to conceal this fact about themselves. They regard
something of the sort as inevitable for everyone. They no longer share the
Enlightenment ideal of a Wissenschaft that is generically human. And to
that rather sizable group of critics who hold that scholars who deal with
religion ought to be neutral with respect to all particular religions, let me
just observe that those who become philosophers of art typically have a
love for art; we do not hold this against them.

My aim in the foregoing has been to enhance comprehension of contemporary philosophy of religion in the analytic tradition by oering a narrative account of how it got to be the way it is. I recognize, of course,
that the character that philosophy assumes at any time and place is in
good measure due to the turns taken by the intellectual imagination of
those engaged in it at that time and place; and that for this theres no
accounting. I have already cited the interventions of Moore and Russell as
going a long way toward accounting for the rather sudden decline of idealism in the anglophone world; so too I have cited the interventions of the
Reformed epistemologists as accounting for much of what is now salient
in analytic philosophy of religion. Thus it is not at all my view that philosophical developments are a case of historical determinism. Nonetheless,
the manifestations of philosophical imagination that are so crucial in
accounting for the turns that philosophy takes do not occur in a vacuum.
To cite the Reformed epistemologists one more time: their work occurred
in the context of a pervasive cultural mentality concerning religion. They
perceived that that mentality incorporated the ideal, handed down from
the Enlightenment, of a rationally grounded religion. They attacked that
ideal. The particular form that their polemic assumed proved enormously
inuential. But had there not been that cultural ideal, there could not
have been that polemic. Other types of illustrations could be given of the
same general point: the intellectual imagination that shapes the course of

Inquiring about God

philosophy is both formed and provoked by the philosophical, cultural,

and social context within which the philosopher nds himself. The story
of philosophy, as I said earlier, is not the story of historically irrelevant
shafts of light darted into our existence at the good pleasure of the keepers of the Platonic ideas.
And now for the nal, programmatic, part of my discussion: What do
I propose for the future? Those who did not know in advance that I am
myself a participant, and happily so, in the developments in philosophy of
religion that I have been describing, will have come to that conclusion well
before now on the basis of my remarks; I have made no attempt at concealment. One might try to enhance the comprehension of some historical philosopher Avicenna, say solely because one nds his thought interesting;
one may not in the least be inclined to accept it. My motivation for trying
to enhance comprehension of these recent developments in philosophy of
religion is not so much because I nd them interesting though I do but
because this is where a good deal of my own work has been located. That
motivation will discernibly have shaped what I said in the descriptive part
of my discussion. It will very obviously shape what I now have to say in
this, the programmatic part. Someone who found this entire development
thoroughly distressing would say something quite dierent.
Let me organize what I have to say under ve heads. First, I am of the
view that the near-hegemonic role that epistemology has played in recent
analytic philosophy of religion should, and will, diminish. I have tried to
explain why epistemology has played such a salient role. I have suggested
that we continue to do our philosophizing about religion in the light and
shadow of the Enlightenment, and that Enlightenment philosophy of religion was little more than epistemology of religion. As long as it remains
part of our cultural mentality that religion ought to be rationally grounded,
the philosopher of religion will have no choice but to deal with issues of
epistemology. Nonetheless, it is my guess that most of the things that ought
to be said, and are worth being said, on this topic, have now been said, or
will soon have been said. So I do not propose that epistemological concerns disappear; it does matter whether our religious beliefs are entitled, for
example, or warranted. But I do propose that epistemological issues assume
a less looming prominence. This would mean, for example, that evil and the
silence of God would be treated less exclusively as epistemological issues
less exclusively, that is to say, as issues that raise the question whether one is
justied, warranted, entitled, or whatever, in believing in God.
That leads, naturally, to my second point. So prominent has been our
focus on epistemology that saying that evil and the silence of God should

Analytic philosophy of religion: retrospect and prospect

be treated less exclusively as epistemological problems will raise the question in the minds of many: How else could they be treated if not as epistemological problems? My answer is that they could instead be treated as
challenges to be faced by the person committed to leading a religious way
of life. My second point then is this: I think that we who are analytic philosophers of religion should begin to devote more attention than we have
to the role of religion in life. On this point, the Wittgensteinian philosophers of religion have something to teach us. Earlier I made the point that
the Wittgensteinians, given their theistic anti-realism, had nothing else to
discuss than the role of religion in life; philosophical reection on God
is not an option for the Wittgensteinian. But be that as it may: religion
obviously does play a role in life. That calls for a great deal more philosophical reection than those in the movement I have been describing
have thus far devoted to it.
Furthermore, in reecting on the role of religion in life, its important
not just to concentrate on private and exotic mystical experiences. For
most believers, communal liturgical practices play a far more important
role in their lives than private mystical experiences. Yet there have been
remarkably few philosophical reections on liturgy. Likewise there have
been remarkably few reections by analytic philosophers of religion on
the role of religion in society.
A third suggestion I wish to make is really a special case of the second,
but worth singling out for special attention. A prominent part in the lives
of most religious believers is the reading and interpreting of canonical
Scriptures. Yet there has been little attention paid by analytic philosophers to the important and fascinating problems of interpretation that
this practice raises. The English tradition of philosophy, in contrast to
the continental of the last century and more, has always paid far more
attention to problems of perception than to problems of interpretation.
Hence it is that one nds far more discussion of mystical experience than
of Scriptural interpretation in the recent analytic tradition. On this point,
we in the analytic tradition have much to learn from our continental fellows. I have practiced what I am now preaching with the publication of
my Divine Discourse.
Fourth, I think we can no longer ignore, to the extent we have, the problems posed by religious pluralism. I make no plea for the Schleiermachean
scheme of religion as having an essence of which the many religions are
manifestations. Likewise I make no plea for Wissenschaft as the product

Cambridge University Press, .

Inquiring about God

solely of our generic humanity. But taking the fact of religious pluralism
as an important topic for philosophical reection does not require signing on to either of these pleas. Let me add that, in my judgment, a serious philosophical address to the problems raised by religious pluralism
will require of us far more inter-religious philosophical dialogue than we
have engaged in up to this point. There was considerably more of such
dialogue among the medieval theologians and philosophers than there is
among us.
Last, I fully endorse the continuation of work in the area of philosophical theology. This, in my judgment, is one of the most important if not
the most important contributions by those who work within the movement of analytic philosophy of religion. Epistemology has been important, but mainly as a polemical operation. Or to change the metaphor, it
has been important as a ground-clearing operation. Not so for the philosophical theology that has been produced. Of course it is this component
of recent philosophy of religion in the analytic tradition that most annoys
and unnerves those theologians and philosophers who identify with the
Kantian positions on fundamental metaphysics and the boundary.
Have you not learned your Kantian lessons? they exclaim.
I close then by returning to one of my basic themes: its not a matter
of learning or not learning ones Kantian lessons. We are dealing here
with deep, unresolved issues within the modern philosophical tradition.
Recent philosophy of religion in the analytic tradition represents one set
of answers to those unresolved issues. It does so with a quite extraordinary
blend of rigor and imagination. It is, in fact, one of the grand episodes in
the history of philosophical reections on religion.

Is it possible and desirable for theologians

to recover from Kant?

About nine months ago, a very gifted theology student came to my oce,
said that she had been reading my recently published Divine Discourse,
and asked whether she could talk about it. The subtitle of Divine Discourse
is: Philosophical Reections on the Claim that God Speaks. That gives
an indication of what the book is about.
Could we talk about it? Of course! What author doesnt like the attery implicit in someone saying, Ive just read your just-published book
and would like to talk about it? She had many insightful things to say.
Oddly, however, it is not her insightful comments that have stuck with
me so much as two perplexing comments. What I nd so fascinating
about your book, she said, is that the book begins and you just start
talking about God. I remember thinking to myself: I suppose so. But
the project of the book was to reect on whether God speaks; and that
required talking about God. So what else might she have expected? Just
then there was a knock at the door and I was distracted; when we got
back to our conversation, I forgot to ask her what she meant.
The other perplexing thing she said was this: Whats forward for you
is backward for me and whats backward for you is forward for me. Theres
only one chapter in the whole book thats forward to forward. I asked
her what she meant. Well, she said, what you discuss last I would have
discussed rst; and what you discuss rst I would have discussed last if
I had gotten around to it at all. My last chapter was on epistemology; so
I knew, or thought I knew, what she meant. She would have put epistemology up front, and discussed substantive matters later assuming the
epistemological matters proved not to occupy the entire book. Of course,
what she actually said was not just that the book as a whole was backward
to forward, but that all the chapters except one were backward to forward
and forward to backward. What she meant by that I did not understand,
and still do not.

Inquiring about God

But I do now know what she meant by saying, The book begins
and you just start talking about God. Very recently this same student
remarked to me, What I nd so frustrating about modern theologians
is that they wont let me say the things about God that I want to say
about God or wont let me say them until Ive shown that such things
can be said about God. So that was it! What she saw in my book was
someone who, if he wanted to say something about God, just went
ahead and said it. Presumably, then, she would make the same remark
about certain other books in philosophy of religion published recently
by philosophers in the analytic tradition for example, about William
P. Alstons book, Perceiving God. The book begins and Alston just starts
talking about God.
Her recent comment, if I had had nothing more to go on than the
comment itself, might still have been perplexing. But the context of our
discussion made clear what she meant. We and a few others had been
talking about the inuence of Immanuel Kant on modern theologians.
That was the context in which she expressed her frustration. It was the
Kantian inuence, so she suggested, that led theologians to tell her that
she should not say the things about God that she wanted to say without
rst showing that such things could be said about God and that she
should stop saying those things if she couldnt show that they could be
said about God.
I could have replied that surely this was not true of all modern
theologians; they didnt all say this. She really ought to watch her generalizations. I did not say that, because I knew which theologians she had
in mind. Without now mentioning them, they constitute, all together,
a large proportion of the modern theologians with whom she was interacting in her studies a large proportion of the theologians constituting the modern component in the canon of the theological curriculum
of her university-a liated divinity school. It was those theologians
who were telling her that she shouldnt say the things about God that
she wanted to say without rst showing that such things could be said
about God.
I might also have insisted that she really ought to disambiguate her
word say. Tillich, to take but one example, was not really telling her
to stop using the words, God reveals. But the student I have in mind
is philosophically quick and sharp; I know what she would have said in
reply. Yes, I know that, she would have said. I know that hell let me
use the words. But he wont let me mean by those words what I want to
mean by them unless I show that one can mean that.

Is it possible for theologians to recover from Kant?

I submit that the crisp comment of this student is as good a formulation as we are going to get of a fundamental methodological theme in
a good many modern theologians: we are not to say about God what
we might want to say without rst showing that such things can be said
about God. And I submit that she was right in seeing Kant as the decisive
inuence here. Another methodological theme that is almost as pervasive
among modern theologians, maybe in fact just as pervasive, is that we are
not to say about God what we want to say without rst establishing that
we are justied in saying those things. In this essay, I want to neglect that
theme and concentrate on the other, viz., on the theme that we are not
to say about God what we want to say without rst establishing that its
possible to say such things about God. This latter theme, obviously, has a
certain priority over the other. If the things I want to say about God cannot really be said about God, then the question of whether I am justied
in saying them, or entitled to say them, does not even arise.


Take note of the structure of the students thought. She came to theology
wanting to say certain things about God. Possibly she also emerged from
her study of theology wanting to say new things about God. But on this
occasion, this last was not what she had her eye on.
How did she come by these things that she wanted to say about God?
I did not ask her; but I feel condent in saying that she came by them
through induction into, and participation within, such primary religious
practices as reading sacred Scripture, participating in the liturgy of the
church, and engaging in private devotions. Perhaps she also came by
them through religious experiences that befell her. In short, it was her
prior (and continuing) religious formation and practice which brought
about that she wanted to say things about God and no doubt, say things
to God. The theology she studied frustrated her in this regard. Perhaps
I should make clear that she is by no means someone who thinks that
everything she has been taught in Sunday School or told by her pastor is
correct. I would be surprised if frustration constituted the totality of her
aective response to the theology she studied; I would guess that sometimes she has experienced a satisfying deepening of insight. But frustration was prominent. And she located the source of that frustration in
the theologians appropriation of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. An
interaction, thus, among three fundamental components of human life

Inquiring about God

and culture: philosophy, theology, and religious formation and practice,

with theology mediating between the other two.
This particular pattern of interaction among these three components of
life and culture is by no means peculiar to the particular case on which
my student had her eye. To the contrary: the same pattern has been exemplied over and over in the history of the West. I think it will prove illuminating, before we analyze the example before us, to look briey at one
of the most important exemplications of the pattern in the pre-modern
world. I have in mind the role of the doctrine of divine simplicity in the
formation of Christian theology and in the formation of Jewish and
Islamic theology as well. The doctrine was bequeathed to theologians by
philosophers, Plotinus preeminent among them; and that it was a menace
to the religious person saying about God what she wanted to say is obvious to anyone who reads around in the theology of late antiquity and the
middle ages. I should add that the medieval theologians did undertake to
diminish this menace all the while, however, continuing their elaborate
spinning out of the implications of the doctrine. For, with no exceptions
of which I am aware, they found the doctrine utterly compelling.
Moses Maimonides, in his Guide of the Perplexed, written for the Jewish
community in Spain in the thirteenth century, was more explicit than
were most medieval theologians in his statement of the overall strategy
and its motivations. Maimonides opens his Introduction by declaring that
the primary purpose of his treatise is to explain the meaning of certain
terms occurring in books of prophecy that is, in the Law, the Torah.
We are led to expect an exegetical commentary. But as Maimonides
makes clear at once, that is not what we will get. My speech, he says,
is directed to one who has philosophized and has knowledge of the true
sciences, but believes at the same time in the matters pertaining to the
Law and is perplexed as to their meaning because of the uncertain terms
and the parables (Guide, a). In other words, Maimonides is addressing
the person who, on the one hand, is a religious man for whom the validity of our Law has become established in his soul and has become actual
in his belief, and who, on the other hand, has studied the sciences of
the philosophers (Guide, a). Such a person is perplexed as to what to
do with these two sides of his life. One option is to follow his intellect,
stick with what he learned in the philosophy classroom, renounce what he

I quote from the version translated by Shlomo Pines with an introduction by Leo Strauss
(University of Chicago Press, ). References to this book will be given parenthetically in the
text.

Is it possible for theologians to recover from Kant?

thought he knew all along about the meaning of terms in the prophets,
and consider that he has renounced the foundations of the Law (Guide,
a). Alternatively, he could hold fast to his [prior] understanding of
these terms and not let himself be drawn on [by] his intellect and by
what he has learned in the philosophy classroom, instead, turning his
back on it and moving away from it (Guide, b). To his description of
this latter option Maimonides at once adds that such a person, having
learned what he did in the philosophy classroom, will perceive that his
renunciation of this learning has brought loss to himself and harm to
his religion. He would be left with those imaginary beliefs to which he
owes his fear and diculty and would not cease to suer from heartache
and great perplexity (Guide, b). From this it is obvious that repudiation of philosophy is not the option that Maimonides recommends; he
does not think the student of philosophy could do that with a clear conscience. But neither does he recommend the rst option, that of renouncing Torah in favor of philosophy. We are instead to go between the horns
of the dilemma. Rather than seeing philosophy as in conict with Torah,
we should see it as opening up to us the true meaning of Torah. The
project Maimonides sets himself in his Guide is to work this strategy out
in detail. He takes passages from the Torah which appear to contradict
what is learned in the philosophy classroom, and oers interpretations in
which all appearance of conict is removed. The student of philosophy
can remain a faithful member of the synagogue.
There are many things that the philosophy student learns in the classroom with which Torah gives the appearance of being in conict. But
as one reads along in Maimonides, one becomes aware of the fact that
there is one source of apparent conict looming high above all others. Its
something that the philosophy student learns about God; namely, that
God is simple. It looms above all others in two ways. The doctrine of
divine simplicity has a truly extraordinary number of implications for our
understanding of God; that is to say, it proves extraordinarily fecund for
discussions on philosophical theology taking place within the philosophy
classroom. And interpreting Scripture so as to make the results compatible with the doctrine of simplicity and its implications proves to require
extraordinary exegetical ingenuity at an extraordinary number of points.
Since the doctrine has almost entirely disappeared from theological
consciousness, I had better explain what it is; one can read vast stretches of
contemporary theology and never come across it. To understand the doctrine, we must realize that it was formulated in the context of Aristotelian
ontology. The fundamental strategy of Aristotelian ontology is to analyze

Inquiring about God

entities into their components: form, matter, essence, existence, properties,

qualities, denitions, accidents, and so forth. The doctrine of divine simplicity is the doctrine that God is devoid of ontological components; God
has no constituents, none at all. In God there is no distinction between
God and Gods essence, nor any between Gods essence and Gods existence, nor any between Gods essence and Gods properties and so forth,
for whatever ontological distinctions there might be.
Why would anyone ever embrace and propound so arcane a doctrine
as this? If one already embraces the doctrine, then it will be utterly compelling to interpret the shema I, the Lord thy God, am one God as
expressing the doctrine. But regarded from the opposite angle, the doctrine seems a amboyant over-interpretation of the shema. And in fact the
doctrine was not the product of scrupulous biblical interpretation.
It was philosophical considerations that led everybody at the time to
nd the doctrine utterly compelling. Everybody at the time found themselves compelled to believe that the structure of reality must include
something which is the ultimate condition of everything not identical
with itself, and which is, accordingly, itself unconditioned by anything.
This we may call God. Now suppose this unconditioned condition of
everything other than itself had components, distinct from itself. Then
in one way or another the precise way depending on the nature of the
components its existence and/or character would be conditional on
those components. And that, of course, is incompatible with being the
unconditioned condition.
So suppose we concede that God is simple. One of the next issues to
consider, in the class on philosophical theology, is whether God changes.
The answer is that of course God does not change. For suppose God did
change. Then one could distinguish between God before the change and
God after the change. But if God is utterly simple, then no such distinction can be made. In turn, if God cannot change, then God cannot in
any way be dierent from how God is; God has no unfullled potentialities. And God cannot be thought of as being in time; for what else is it to
be in time, than that there are elements of ones life and existence which
stand in temporal succession relations to each other? But since in God
there arent any components, perforce there arent any components that
stand in temporal succession relations to each other.
I could go on in this vein for quite some time, as did the medievals; but
I trust I have said enough to give the reader some glimmer of how fecund
this doctrine of simplicity proved to be and how fecund the doctrine
that lies behind it, the doctrine of divine aseity, proved to be. Grant these

Is it possible for theologians to recover from Kant?

doctrines, and one has to grant an astonishing list of other things about
God.
Now recall the situation: the student learning all these things in the
class on philosophical theology came to the class as a faithful member of
the synagogue, the church, or the mosque. He will, accordingly, be perplexed by what he has been hearing. The picture of God that he acquired
from Scripture and liturgy is the picture of a God who acts in history,
who does one thing after another, who has options available, and so forth.
He has now been taught by his philosophy professor that this picture is
radically mistaken; accordingly, he will have to reinterpret systematically
all the language from Scripture and liturgy that conveyed to him his earlier picture of God either that, or just scrap that language.
Up to this point, everything has proceeded very smoothly within the
philosophy classroom itself. Now things begin to get sticky. The philosopher teaching the class oers arguments for the love and the knowledge
of God, these arguments resting heavily on those prior commitments to
the aseity and simplicity of God. He argues that God knows all things
and loves all things. Our student is surprised. He is not surprised to
hear someone claiming that God knows and loves all things; he himself
already believed this, on the basis of Scripture and liturgy. What surprises
him is that his philosophy teacher believes this, and that his philosophy
teacher is trying to argue for it philosophically. For the claim appears to
him, the student, to be in conict with the prior commitment to divine
simplicity. Is it not the case that acts of knowledge are dierentiated by
diversity of objects of knowledge? Perhaps by other features as well; but at
least by that. My knowledge of A is distinct from my knowledge of B if A
is distinct from B. So how can a simple God know many things?
There are more such surprises in store. The teacher goes on to argue
that God wills wills many things. This too is surprising. Once again,
its not surprising that someone should believe that God wills. This is also
something that the student came to the classroom believing; he picked it
up from Scripture and liturgy. The surprise lies in hearing his teacher of
philosophical theology arming this, and arguing for it philosophically.
Earlier his teacher observed that simplicity implies that God is devoid of
potentialities; God is pure actuality. But if in God there are no potentialities, no options, what could possibly be meant by the attribution of will
to God?
And somewhere along the way it occurs to the student to suspect that
his teacher has inadvertently fallen into incoherence. God is simple, so the
teacher argued; and from this he extracted a long list of additional things

Inquiring about God

to be said about God. But if God is simple, how can there be additional
things to be said about God? To say additional things about ordinary
things is to single out additional features of the thing. But in the simple
God, there are no distinct features to be singled out; all Gods features
are identical with each other. Yet surely we are not just repeating ourselves when we say that God is eternal, immutable, knowledgeable, and
so forth.
Come to think of it, how can we say even one thing about God? To
say something about some ordinary thing is to pick out some feature of
that thing and attribute that feature to that thing. But in God, there is
no feature to pick out, for there is no distinction between God and Gods
features. Given the theistic ontology that has been developed, it seems
impossible to predicate anything of God. Yet we have to have been doing
exactly that in developing our theistic ontology. Or so it certainly seems.
Lastly, somewhere along the line the Christian student in the classroom is going to raise his hand and ask: How is simplicity compatible
with trinity? Doesnt the person who believes that God is triune thereby,
and perforce, believe that God is not simple?
I trust that my main point is abundantly clear. Its not a new thing for
the theologian to say to the religious person that she cannot just say and
mean about God what her religious formation and practice have taught
her to want to say and mean about God; nor is it a new thing for that
prohibition to have philosophical roots. The roots and consequences of
the prohibition in modern theology are dierent, however, from those in
medieval theology; I will draw the contrast later.


The student who expressed to me her frustration with modern theology
is thoroughly acquainted with medieval theology; shes knowledgeable in
both the medieval and the modern periods. She knows that the doctrine
of divine simplicity conicts at many points with the picture of God that
one picks up from reading Scripture and participating in the liturgy; she
knows that it also created immense diculties within the philosophical
classroom itself. She knows, in short, about the dark menacing shadow
cast by the doctrine of divine simplicity over both religious life and theology. Yet her frustration is with modern theology. She does not by any
means accept everything the medieval theologians say; she argues with
them. Shes not a theological throwback. But the medieval theologians

Is it possible for theologians to recover from Kant?

dont frustrate her in the way the modern theologians do. They might
bore her sometimes whom dont they bore sometimes! but they dont
frustrate her. She thinks the clue to why the modern theologians frustrate her is to be found in the inuence of Immanuel Kant on modern
theology. Lets pursue that clue.
No matter which part of Kants thought one picks up, the project of
elucidating that part accurately and briey has no more than a marginal
chance of success. Nonetheless, let me try. My interpretation will be relatively traditional. I have doubts whether this relatively traditional interpretation is correct; more relevant to the purposes at hand, however, is
the fact that the traditional interpretation is the one that inuenced the
theological tradition.
Fundamental to Kants thought on the matter at hand is the metaphor
of a boundary. If we can discern how he uses that metaphor, we will
have in hand what is necessary for our purposes here. One of the passages in which the metaphor is most prominent is the Conclusion to the
Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. And let me note, by the way, that,
contrary to what one might have expected, Kants Prolegomena appears
to have had far more inuence on modern theology than his Religion
within the Bounds of Reason Alone. My guess is that, had the latter been
the more inuential, Kants inuence on theology would have been quite
dierent all in all, less productive of skepticism concerning our ability
to speak about God. Kant titles the Conclusion of the Prolegomena, On
the Determination of the Bounds of Pure Reason; and at the beginning
of the third section of the Conclusion he makes clear that his use of
the metaphor of a boundary is by no means incidental: At the beginning of this note, he says, I made use of the metaphor of a boundary,
in order to establish the limits of reason in regard to its suitable use
(Prolegomena, ).
One of the most fundamental themes in Kants thought is that reality
puts in its appearance to us, and that it does so in the form of representations mental representations. Mental representations just are episodes
of realitys putting in its appearance to us. These representations are for

See the discussion of Kant in Does the role of concepts make experiential access to ready-made
reality impossible? in my Practices of Belief, Terence Cuneo, ed. (Cambridge University Press,
), ch. .
I quote from the version edited by Lewis White Beck (New York: Liberal Arts Press, ).
Quotations from the Critique of Pure Reason are from the version edited by Norman Kemp Smith
(New York: Macmillan, ). References to these books are given parenthetically in the text.

Inquiring about God

us items or episodes of intuition, of awareness, of Anschauung. The occurrence of episodes of awareness is thus a mark of receptivity to reality on
our part. If reality did not act upon us in the manner of putting in its
appearance to us, our mental life would have no intuitional content.
Things may well be dierent for other beings. There may be beings who
have it in their power to bring about intuitional representations of entities.
Not so for us who are human beings. We have intuitions only so far as
the object is given to us, in distinction from being brought about by us.
And this, in turn, is only possible for human beings in so far as the mind
is aected in a certain way (Critique of Pure Reason, A). An awareness
of dizziness, an awareness of some patch of color, an awareness of something textured, take what example of awareness you will, all are inputs
from reality; none is an output of oneself.
A fundamental structural feature of our human intuitions is that all
of them occur in time, and many occur in space. Thus temporality and
spatiality are related to our sensuous intuitions as form is related to matter. Time and space are forms of intuition. Thats all they are: structural
features of how reality appears to us. They are not features of the reality
putting in the appearance. Its no accident that these are forms of intuition; it could not be otherwise, not for us, anyway. For it is of the essence
of the human being to be so constituted that reality can put in its appearance to us only if the intuitions which constitute that appearance occur
within time and space. There may be, for all we know, beings for whom
this is not true, beings whose intuitions are not spatial and temporal as
indeed there may be beings other than human beings for whom time and
space are forms of intuition.
One of Kants most important doctrines about intuitions is that in the
absence of intuition, there is no knowledge. The point is not that our
knowledge of things is conned to those things of which we have awareness; one can have knowledge of people one has never met. The point is
rather that all our knowledge of entities is either awareness of those entities or ultimately grounded in awareness of some entities or other. Though
I can have knowledge of people I have never met, I couldnt have such
knowledge if I were totally devoid of sensory input. To put the point in
Kants own words: in whatever manner and by whatever means a mode
of knowledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it is
in immediate relation to them, and to which all thought as a means is
directed (Critique of Pure Reason, A). Kant adds to this the further
strong claim that our knowledge of objects is limited to what we could in
principle experience.

Is it possible for theologians to recover from Kant?

But though all knowledge of objects has either an intuitional component or basis, intuition is not sucient for knowledge. Knowledge is
always conceptual; knowledge always incorporates concepts. Accordingly,
our intuitions, if they are to play a role in our cognitive life, must somehow gain entry into our conceptual space. Such entry occurs by virtue
of the fact that human awareness is always awareness under concepts. I
dont just hear something, I hear it as middle C; I dont just see something, I see it as a dog; I dont just have sensations, I experience my sensation as dizziness; and so forth. The British empiricists thought that we
extract concepts from the intuitions given to us, and compare intuitions
with concepts that we already possess so as to judge whether the concept
ts the intuition. Either way, concepts are always Johnny-come-latelys on
the empiricist view rst the intuition, then the concept. Kant insists, to
the contrary, that awareness is always awareness under concepts; the intuitional given is always already conceptualized, always already conceptually
interpreted. This is the fundamental role of concepts, on which all else
rests: to serve as modes of interpretation of intuitions. Its true that concepts also function as the predicates of our judgments. But if we did not
conceptualize our intuitions, if we did not interpret them conceptually,
if our intuitions were not intuitions under concepts, we could never connect intuitions with judgments.
It is ones own understanding that provides and applies concepts.
Intuitions are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding arise concepts (ibid.). Conceptualizing is thus a mark of mental
activity, in contrast to intuitions, which are a mark of mental receptivity.
It follows that all knowledge, based as it is on conceptualized intuitions,
represents a blend of receptivity and activity.
The fundamental role of concepts, to say it again, is to interpret our
intuitions. Concepts are rules for interpreting the manifold of intuitions.
I interpret my sensory intuitions as, say, my experience of an elephant.
But I could also interpret those very same intuitions as sensory states of
myself; in fact, anything that can be interpreted as an experience of a
spatio-temporal object can also be interpreted as a sensory state of the
percipient. Thus it was Kants view that we should reject the picture,
developed by Descartes and Locke, of there being spatio-temporal objects
in addition to our mental representations. External spatio-temporal
objects are not in addition to representations. The situation is rather that
the manifold of intuitions can (in good measure) be conceptually interpreted not just as states of self but also as experience of external objects.
Objectivity is the product of conceptual interpretation of intuitions as

Inquiring about God

indeed is subjectivity. It is the activity of our understanding, says Kant,

to compare representations, and, by combining or separating them,
work up the raw material of the sensible impressions into that knowledge
of objects which is entitled experience (Critique of Pure Reason, B).
When one surveys the entire array of human concepts, one sees that
they fall into certain ultimate types twelve, to be exact. Call those ultimate types, categories. Kant believed that exactly these twelve categories
belong to the native and essential furniture of the human mind. Falling
under the category of substance are such concepts as dog, table, and
mountain. The human mind is not stocked, natively and essentially, with
those particular concepts; some human beings have surely never had the
concept of a mountain. But we can be assured, said Kant, that there never
has been and never could be a human being who possessed no concepts
whatsoever falling under the category of substance. And so also for the
other eleven categories.
I submit that for anyone who thinks along these lines, the metaphor of
a bound is irresistible. There are bounds to the functioning of our categories and of the concepts belonging to those categories; and those bounds
constitute the bounds of human knowledge. For the categories just are
the ultimate concept-types of the human understanding; we can neither
fail to have concepts of these types nor can we have concepts of other
types. And the basic function of the concepts belonging to these types
is to interpret the manifold of intuitions given us, thereby working up
that manifold into knowledge and the basis of knowledge. To make the
underlying thought explicit, we might speak not just of bounds to the
employment of the categories but of bounds to the intuitional employment of the categories: the bounds to the intuitional employment of the
categories constitute the bounds of human knowledge. Since it belongs to
the essence of our intuitions that they occur within time, we might also
say that time is what determines those bounds. Let me quote Kant, from
the opening to the Conclusion of the Prolegomena:
Having adduced the clearest arguments, it would be absurd for us to hope that
we can know more of any object than belongs to the possible experience of it or
lay claim to the least knowledge of anything not assumed to be an object of possible experience which would determine it according to the constitution it has in
itself. For how could we determine anything in this way, since time, space, and
all the [categories], and still more all the concepts formed by empirical intuition
(perception) in the sensible world, have and can have no other use than to make
experience possible? And if this condition is omitted from the [categories], they
do not determine any object and have no meaning whatever. (Prolegomena, )

Is it possible for theologians to recover from Kant?

Immediately after enunciating the above, Kant issues a warning. Do not

jump to the conclusion that the bounds of the intuitional employment of
the categories constitute the bounds of all that is, nor that they constitute
the bounds of knowledge in general, non-human as well as human. Over
and over, hundreds if not thousands of times, Kant reminds us of his
fundamental picture: The world of sense contains merely appearances,
which are not things in themselves; but the understanding, because it recognizes that the objects of experience are mere appearances, must assume
that there are things in themselves, namely, noumena (Prolegomena,
Conclusion, ). Given this picture, it would be a still greater absurdity than the absurdity mentioned above
if we conceded no things in themselves or set up our experience as the only possible mode of knowing things, our intuition of them in space and in time for the
only possible intuition and our discursive understanding for the archetype of
every possible understanding; for this would be to wish to have the principles of
the possibility of experience considered universal conditions of things in themselves. (Prolegomena, )

The boundary of a eld is not just the bounds of the eld, but the line
dividing that eld from other elds. Unlike bounds, boundaries are
always between things. Kant had that in mind when he used the metaphor
of a boundary. A boundary, he says, is something positive, which belongs
to that which lies within as well as to the space that lies without the given
content (Prolegomena, Conclusion, ). The intuitional employment of
the categories determines the boundary between the humanly knowable
and the humanly unknowable, between the phenomenal and the noumenal, between reality as it puts in its appearance to us and reality as it is in
itself. It is the calling of the philosopher to discuss the role of reason, such
as it is, on both sides of the boundary. In our reason both are comprehended, and the question is, How does reason proceed to set boundaries
to the understanding as regards both these elds? (ibid.)
Th is last point requires brief elaboration. Knowledge of the transcendent, Kant has been saying, is unavailable to us, since the bounds
of the intuitional employment of the categories de ne the bounds of
human knowledge, and those bounds coincide with the bounds of
time. But do not infer, he insists, that because the transcendent is
closed to knowledge, it is closed to every form of intellectual access
whatsoever. In a famous passage from the preface to the second edition
of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant remarks that he found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith. Though the

Inquiring about God

transcendent is closed to knowledge, it is not closed to faith. What

Kant means, in speaking of making room for faith, is making room
for convictions about God that do not amount to knowledge. Not
indeed room for any old convictions about God; it was by no means
Kants intent to make room for any faith you please. Rational faith is
what he had in mind. It was for rationally grounded convictions concerning God, and the transcendent in general, that he wished to make
room. He himself was convinced that practical reason furnishes such
grounding and only practical reason.


Now, at last, we are in the position of being able to pinpoint precisely the
source of the agony Kant has caused theologians. A presupposition of the
claim that practical reason provides the materials for arriving at rationally
grounded convictions about God is that we can form convictions about
God. And a condition, in turn, of being able to form convictions concerning God, is that, on the one hand, we can somehow get God in mind
well enough for our convictions to be convictions about God rather than
about something else or nothing at all, and, on the other hand, that what
we believe about God, once we have God in mind, is something that, so
far as we know, might well be true of God. Kant is well aware of these
assumptions; he puts the point by saying that we must be able to think
God and the transcendent.
But on the Kantian line of thought that I have laid out, it is problematic, to put it mildly, that these conditions can be met. Often what brings
it about that we have something in mind well enough to be able to form
beliefs and make assertions about it is that we have experienced it. But
God, in the Kantian scheme, cannot be an object of experience. Denite
descriptions provide another way of getting things in mind; I can pick
someone out as the thirty-seventh president of the United States, and
then proceed to make claims about him. But denite descriptions express
concepts; and Kant has already argued that it is the function of human
concepts to interpret intuitions. How then could I possibly, by assembling concepts into denite descriptions, use those descriptions to get in
mind what lies beyond the boundary? Consider, said the medievals, the
unconditioned condition of everything not identical with itself. But condition, on Kants doctrine, is a concept whose function, like that of every
other concept, is to interpret the manifold of intuitions. How then can
we use it to pick out something on the other side of the boundary?

Is it possible for theologians to recover from Kant?

Indeed, isnt the metaphor of a boundary itself deeply problematic? A

bound there may be; but a boundary? Whats on the other side? Things in
themselves, says Kant the reality that puts in its appearance to us, the
noumenal, the transcendent. But consider the reality/appearance distinction. Thats a distinction that we use for interpreting the manifold of intuitions: an object appears square to me, but really it is not. Is Kant really
picking anything out, getting anything in mind, with his use of the phrase
things in themselves? Is he, on his premises, entitled to think that he is?
But suppose I do get God in mind, somehow or other. What then, on
the Kantian doctrine, is available to me for predicating about this entity
that I have in mind? Predicates express concepts. But concepts, as we have
now been told many times, are rules for interpreting the manifold of intuitions. If so, then it would seem that predicating anything of God must
always reect deep confusion on the predicators part. The only thing that
would seem not to reect confusion would be to deny things of God.
Kantian theology, so it would seem, must be exclusively negative theology. But even negative theology presupposes the ability to get God in
mind; only if I have God in mind can I deny something of God. And that
brings us back to our prior point: how, on Kantian premises, could one
ever get God in mind well enough even to deny things of God? Theology,
on Kantian premises, looks impossible.
Kant himself was not willing to discard God-thought and God-talk.
Nor was he willing to be a reductionist and say that such thought and
talk are nothing else than special ways of thinking and talking about
ordinary reality as when ones atheist friend blurts out, Thank God
its Friday. But what then are we to make of them? Before we think and
speak about God, we must address the question of how such thinking
and speaking are possible. Thats not the right way to put it, though, since
that way of putting it presupposes that we can in fact think and speak
about God. The right way to state the project is this: before we engage in
God-thought and God-talk, we must address the question whether such
thought and speech are ever really about God. If they are, how is that
possible? If they are not, how then are we to understand such thought and
speech? Is even faith possible, on Kants terms?
,
-
There are many options to explore for the interpretation of God-thought
and God-talk. Many options have in fact been explored, Kant himself
being the rst of such explorers. From Kants late book, Religion within

Inquiring about God

the Bounds of Reason Alone, and from his unpublished Lectures on

Philosophical Theology, it becomes clear that Kant not only thought that
we could get God in mind, but also that we were entitled to predicate a
good many things of God. Thus Kants own option turns out to be relatively non-skeptical. On this occasion I do not propose describing it. It is
complex, at many points hazy, and has proved not at all compelling, even
for Kantians which of course explains why so many other options have
been explored. Though many theologians and philosophers have found
Kants problem, along with the philosophical framework generating that
problem, compelling, few have found his solution compelling.
Looking at proposed solutions does, however, illuminate the issues.
So let me look briey at the solution proposed in a book which, though
relatively recent, has already acquired the status of a classic example of
a theologian wrestling with the problem of how to understand Godthought and God-talk, given the Kantian boundary. I have in mind
Gordon Kaufmans book, God the Problem. While repeatedly claiming
that the hand of Kant rests heavy on modern theologians, I have up to
now not mentioned anyone on whom it rests heavy. That deciency I now
remove.
Referring to the magisterial theologians who worked between and
, and in particular, to Karl Barth, Kaufman remarks that he does
not wish to criticize the work or depreciate the signicance of the men
of this period (God the Problem, ). Yet in our present situation it would
be foolish, he says, to proceed with ones theological work as though the
foundations were absolutely rm and unshakable, ones only task being
the straightforward explication of the Christian faith (God the Problem,
). Theological discourse itself has become the overriding problem for the
theologian.
What is that problem? Kaufman states it this way in one passage:
The central problem of theological discourse, not shared with any other language game, is the meaning of the term God. God raises special problems
of meaning because it is a noun which by denition refers to a reality transcendent of, and thus not located within, experience. A new convert may wish to refer
the warm feeling in his heart to God, but God is hardly to be identied with
this emotion; the biblicist may regard the Bible as Gods Word; the moralist may
believe God speaks through mens consciences; the churchman may believe God
is present among his people but each of these would agree that God himself
transcends the locus referred to. As the Creator or Source of all that is, God is

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, . References to Kaufmans book are given parenthetically in the text.

Is it possible for theologians to recover from Kant?

not to be identied with any particular nite reality. But if absolutely nothing
within our experience can be directly identied as that to which the term God
properly refers, what meaning does or can the word have? (God the Problem, )

Though Kant could certainly have written this passage, with the exception
of the phrase language game, the thought is not, I would say, uniquely
Kantian. Thats not true for Kaufmans restatement of the problem some
pages later; the Kantian framework is now unmistakable:
The real referent for God is never accessible to us or in any way open to our
observation or experience. It must remain always an unknown X, a mere limiting idea with no content. It stands for the fact that God transcends our knowledge in modes and ways of which we can never be aware and of which we have
no inkling. (God the Problem, )

So what to do? Make do, says Kaufman, with the available referent of
the word God. It is this that bears signicantly on human life and
thought. It is the available God whom we have in mind when we worship or pray; it is the available referent that gives content and specicity
to any sense of moral obligation or duty to obey Gods will Th is does
not mean, of course, that believers directly pray to or seek to serve some
mere idea or image in their minds that would be the crassest sort of
idolatry; it is rather that what their images and ideas are of is the available
God, not some utterly unknowable X (God the Problem, ).
And what is the available referent? It is the meaning (as opposed to
the referent) of the word God. It is our ideas of God, the ways we have
come to think of God. It is:
that structure of meaning which has developed over many centuries in the West,
growing out of certain Hebrew (and also Greek) roots. It is carried in the culture
as the meaning of God and is elaborated and developed in many ways in literary documents and works of philosophical and theological reection, as well
as in religious liturgies and institutions, moral practice and reection, and the
ordinary work and speech of everyday life. (God the Problem, )

A crucial component of the available referent of the word God, says

Kaufman, perhaps indeed the central component, is the conviction that
God is ultimately profound Mystery and utterly escapes our every eort
to grasp or comprehend him. Our concepts are at best metaphors and
symbols of his being, not literally applicable (). Of course, applying a
metaphor or symbol to something presupposes having gotten that something in mind well enough to apply a metaphor or symbol to it; the point
that keeps nagging the Kantian turns up once more in only a slightly
dierent guise.

Inquiring about God

Kaufmans proposal as to how we ought to understand theistic discourse

has regularly been pilloried by philosophers of religion in the analytic
tradition several of them, friends of mine. I share their conviction that
his proposal is unsatisfactory though Im sure that he, in turn, regards
their criticisms as obtuse, in that they have not even so much as discerned
the problem to which he has oered his proposal as a solution. I myself,
as a religious person, would stop thinking God-thoughts and cease using
God-talk if I thought I was never thinking and speaking about God;
thus I see the proposal as one more menace to the religious life. But I
have no desire to place Kaufman in the stocks yet once more. For his
solution, though unsatisfactory, strikes me as not signicantly more so
than the other solutions that have been proposed to the problem. Its true
that whereas Kaufman oers his analysis of God-thought and God-talk
in the context of having conceded that we cannot genuinely think and
speak of God, Kant, as already mentioned, resists that concession. In that
respect, I regard Kants proposal as more satisfactory. Whats questionable
is whether it is internally coherent.


Kant is a watershed in the history of theology. Ever since Kant, the anxious questions, Can we? How can we? have haunted theologians, insisting on being addressed before any others. This is the agony, the Kantian
agony, of the modern theologian. Since Kant, a good many of our theologians have spoken far more condently about the existence of The Great
Boundary than about the existence of God.
A medieval book of theology opened with the author talking about
God. What later in the discussion proves menacing to the religious life,
and to the understanding of God that we bring to theology from our
participation in the religious life, is the knowledge of God that the author
claimed to have arrived at. In Kant, it is rather our supposed inability to
gain knowledge of God that is menacing to the religious life and to the
understanding of God embedded therein. More menacing yet is the fact
that it is not the least bit clear that even faith is possible, for its not clear
that we can get God well enough in mind even to believe things about
God. The medieval simplicity-theologian found himself facing severe
intellectual diculties in the course of pursuing his project of developing
knowledge of God. Kant found himself facing severe intellectual diculties in the course of pursuing his project of explaining how we can at least

Is it possible for theologians to recover from Kant?

think God; knowledge is out of the question. The intellectual challenge

for the medieval simplicity-theologian was to understand God that is,
to understand something of God; we learn that though God can be ontologically located, Gods essence is beyond our grasp in this life: far too
rich. The intellectual challenge for the Kantian is to understand not God
but God-thought and God-talk. Depending on the conclusion, she may
or may not see herself entitled to go on and actually say something about
God.

Is it required of present-day theologians that they ask the Kantian questions, Can we? How can we? Must one experience the Kantian agony to
be a modern theologian?
Questions arise out of contexts. The Kantian questions arise out of
the Kantian context. So the issue is whether that context is like a fact of
nature to be coped with, or a human artefact to be questioned. Before
the analytic philosopher shoots down the proposals oered by theologians, he should at least discern the problem to which those proposals
are oered as solutions. Fair enough. But equally, before the theologian oers another solution to the problem, and then yet another, and
another, its important to question the problem. Perhaps the problem is
the problem.
The problem is how we are to understand God-thought and God-talk,
given the Kantian bound or boundary. No harm in trying to understand
God-thought and God-talk. But what about the bound, the boundary?
Is it possible to move beyond Kant on this point? Not to halt before him,
not to sneak around him, but to move beyond him? I mean, is it possible
to appropriate what is important and insightful in Kant on the matters at
hand, and discard the rest? To appropriate, without being appropriated?
Let me give an indication on this occasion exceedingly brief of how,
as I see it, this might be done.
Kants postulation of The Great Boundary depends crucially on his
account of intuitions and on his account of concepts. It is especially on
those two points, as I see it, that we must focus our reections. Remove
Kants account of intuitions and concepts, and very nearly the whole
structure totters and topples.
As to intuitions, Kant assumes that the intuitional content of our mental life consists entirely of mental representations produced in us by reality; intuitions are inputs. As for concepts, Kant assumes that the basic

Inquiring about God

function of our concepts is to interpret conceptually interpret our

intuitional inputs; intuitional inputs are always already conceptualized.
Grant these assumptions, and it is dicult to avoid becoming skeptical
concerning our ability to have knowledge or rationally grounded beliefs
about the reality putting in its appearance to us. Many have seen the only
option to be embracing comprehensive anti-realism by denying that there
is any such reality.
How might the intuitional component of our mental life be understood dierently? Well, we might reject the mental representationalist
picture. Reject the assumption that awareness always represents input.
Consider sensory perception: we might reject the thesis that perception
of an object consists of awareness of some input produced in us by that
object, and replace it with the thesis that perception of an object consists
of awareness of that object awareness of an eagle, of a dog, whatever.
That is to say: we might think of perceptual awareness not as input but
as action as the actualization of one of our human powers. Of course
we had better not make this move if we think we have compelling arguments against analyzing perception of an object as awareness of the object
perceived. But do we have such compelling arguments? What are they?
We have a picture that has held us in its grip. But do we have compelling
arguments? Many, myself included, have concluded that we do not. And
lets remind ourselves that as we assess the cogency of such arguments as
have been oered, we had better allow the severe diculties that mental
representationalism lands us in to enter into our overall appraisal.
How might we think of concepts dierently? Well, surely Kant was
right in his claim that awareness is normally if not always awareness under
concepts. Normally if not always my perception of the table is the perception of it under the concept of table, or the concept of item of furniture,
or the concept of brown thing, or whatever. This part of Kant we should
most denitely hang on to. We do interpret our experience conceptually.
But notice that if we understand perception of an object as awareness
of the object rather than as awareness of a mental representation caused
by the object then it will not make sense to follow Kant in the further
step he takes of thinking of concepts as rules for structuring the objects of
our awareness. For now the objects of our awareness are not mental states
but eagles and dogs. And eagles and dogs are already structured; they
dont await structuring by us.
How do concepts work on this alternative picture? To perceive an eagle
under the concept of eagle is to perceive it to be what it is. Concepts are
not barriers between mind and reality but links. The concept of eagle is

Is it possible for theologians to recover from Kant?

at one and the same time one of the concepts that I possess and one of
the concepts that is satised by the thing I perceive, namely, an eagle.
As I myself see the matter: to possess the concept of table is to grasp the
property of being a table. If that is so, then properties are at one and the
same time entities that we grasp and entities that external objects possess.
They are the links.
On this picture, how might God be gotten in mind? Notice that Kants
use of the metaphor of boundary now no longer has applicability. We no
longer have to suppose that the applicability of our concepts is conned
to our intuitions. So one way we might get God in mind is by the use of
denite descriptions. The expression, Creator of the universe might pick
God out; synonymously: The one who brought about all that might not
have been. And secondly, it may be that some human beings have had
God in mind as that of which they were aware. For a possibility that we
now have to take seriously is that human beings might sometimes have
awareness of God.
Let me tip my hand. The alternative way of thinking about these matters that I have been pointing towards is the Reidian way. It is my own
judgment that there were two philosophers who towered above all others
in the late eighteenth century Immanuel Kant, of course, but along
with him, Thomas Reid. Reids genius has been obscured for reasons
that I wont here go into. I judge the time ripe for exploring the Reidian
option.

At the end of our books about God, those of us who are not Kantians
will discuss how it is that we human beings can think and speak about
God. That for us is an important matter of intellectual curiosity. But not
a matter of agony. We empathize with those who experience the Kantian
agony, but we do not share it.
If one believes that ones car is in good running order, one does not
spend the whole day tinkering under the hood to determine whether it
could possibly be in good running order, and if so, how. One gets in and
drives o. Along the way one might discuss with ones passengers how it
is that this old car runs especially if they thought it wouldnt!

Conundrums in Kants rational religion

In his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant argued that the Summum Bonum
is a necessary ideal of practical reason. Acknowledging morality as real
requires that we also think of such a state as real. One aspect of the
Summum Bonum is that in it, each persons happiness is directly proportioned to that persons moral worth. Obviously this present life does not
qualify as such a state, nor are we as human beings capable of bringing
about such a state. Accordingly, Kant drew the conclusion that, for there
to be such a state, there must be a God who proportions happiness to
virtue, and we ourselves must enjoy some sort of immortal existence
transcending this present physical/historical existence of ours. Another
aspect of the Summum Bonum is that, in it, each person can endlessly
progress in the direction of ideal moral worth hence also in the direction of complete happiness. Or to put the same point dierently, the
Summum Bonum is that state in which it is possible for us, whatever we
may have done in the past, to advance toward becoming persons entirely
well-pleasing to God. God will express pleasure over our advance in moral
worth by granting to us ever greater happiness.
In Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant speaks again of the
Summum Bonum, only now from the side of religion rather than from
the side of morality. He assumes that religious belief, if it is to be justiably held, must be based on adequate evidence. Religious belief is not
self-justifying. It must receive its justication from elsewhere. Thus Kant
continues the tradition of evidentialism concerning religious belief that
was initiated by John Locke. Furthermore, Kant was convinced that

Though without ever reaching it: if after this life another life awaits [the man of good
disposition], he may hope to continue to follow [the course of moral improvement] and to
approach ever nearer to, though he can never reach, the goal of perfection (Religion, ; cf. ). I
quote from the version translated and edited by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New
York: Harper Torchbooks, ). References to this text are given parenthetically in the text.
For a discussion of Locke, see my The Migration of the Theistic Arguments: From Natural
Theology to Evidentialist Apologetics, in Robert Audi and William J. Wainwright, eds.,

Conundrums in Kants rational religion

morality is the only area of human existence in which there is any hope
of nding the adequate evidence. Adequate reasons for religious beliefs
will always prove to be moral principles. It would be a serious mistake
to say of Kant that he tried to reduce religion to morality. What he tried
to do, rather, was show that morality provides us with reasons for holding certain central religious beliefs, thus making us justied in holding
them. Kant regarded the moral principles in question as necessary truths
albeit synthetic, not analytic, necessary truths. Thus Kant was not only
an evidentialist concerning religious belief; his particular way of trying to
carry out the evidentialist requirement satises the demands of classical
foundationalism.
In discussing the justication of religious belief, Kant had his eye
especially on Christianity. He did not think that everything in the
Christianity of the churches could be rationally grounded. But he did
think that the core, the kernel, of Christianity could be justied and,
conversely, that Christianity was, above all religions, a religion of morality. The ritualistic side of Christianity should be seen, he thought, as having merely historical worth: rituals are necessary, for a time, if humanity
is to progress to the point where it can discard a faith of divine worship
and make do with a purely rational religion. Furthermore, some passages
in the Bible may have to be interpreted in a somewhat forced manner.
Yet Kant thought that, overall, no serious violence would be done to the
New Testament at least, if we interpret it as proclaiming a religion that
can, in fact, be grounded on moral foundations if we interpret it, as
regards its essential content, in line with the universal moral dogmas
(Religion, ).
The main element of Christianity on which Kant had his eye in
Religion was faith in salvation. Are we warranted, he asked, in holding
out salvation endless increase in happiness as a genuine possibility
for ourselves? If faith in the possibility of salvation is to be justied, we
must be entitled, Kant said, to believe two specic things about our moral

Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, ),
. Th is essay is reprinted in my Practices of Belief: Essays in Epistemology, Terence Cuneo, ed.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).
An essential part of Kants overall interpretive strategy was to treat biblical narrative as a vivid
mode of representation (Religion, ) of moral truths: since the sacred narrative, which is
employed solely on behalf of ecclesiastical faith, can have and, taken by itself, ought to have absolutely no inuence upon the adoption of moral maxims, and since it is given to ecclesiastical faith
only for the vivid presentation of its true object (virtue striving toward holiness), it follows that
this narrative must at all times be taught and expounded in the interest of morality (Religion,
).

Inquiring about God

status and moral progress: we must be justied in believing that we can

become well-pleasing to God through a good course of life in the future,
and we must be justied in believing that our guilt for our past wrongdoing will somehow be undone in other words, that there will be atonement for us, reparation for guilt, redemption, and thus reconciliation with
God (Religion, ).
As to the rst of these, Kant saw no problem. Even the person characterized by radical evil is capable of a change of heart; for a change of
heart such as this must be possible, because duty requires it (Religion,
). And though having a good moral character does not yet guarantee
that each of ones individual actions will be good, that too must be seen
as a theoretical, if not a practical, possibility again, on the ought implies
can principle. The very concept of God implies that insofar as a persons
character and actions are good, that person will be well-pleasing to God.
It is that other conviction, that other component of faith in salvation, that Kant found deeply problematic and which, as I read Religion,
haunted him throughout. How can our evil past be made well-pleasing
to God? How can guilt for our prior wrongdoing be undone (Religion,
), wiped out (Religion, )? And if somehow it can be undone, what
reason is there for thinking it will be undone? Yet unless it can be undone,
and unless we have reason for thinking it will be undone, faith in salvation is groundless. For none of us is without wrongdoing. So if our guilt is
not wiped out, the proportioning of felicity to moral worth will result in
our happiness being limited rather than endlessly expansible.
Clearly, says Kant, the wiping out is beyond human capabilities.
Suppose that a person, having had a character of radical evil, undergoes
a conversion, conversion being, for each of us, as we have seen, always a
real possibility.
Whatever a man may have done in the way of adopting a good disposition, and
indeed, however steadfastly he may have persevered in conduct conformable to
such a disposition, he nevertheless started from evil, and this debt [Verschuldung,
guilt] he can by no possibility wipe out. For he cannot regard the fact that he
incurs no new debts subsequent to his change of heart as equivalent to having
discharged his old ones. Neither can he, through future good conduct, produce
a surplus over and above what he is under obligation to perform at every instant,
for it is always his duty to do all the good that lies in his power. (Religion, )

So too,
this debt that is original, or prior to all the good a man may do this, and no
more, is what we referred to in Book One as the radical evil in man this debt
can never be discharged by another person, so far as we can judge according

Conundrums in Kants rational religion

to the justice of our human reason. For this is no transmissible liability which
can be made over to another like a nancial indebtedness rather is it the most
personal of all debts, namely a debt of sins, which only the culprit can bear and
which no innocent person can assume even though he be magnanimous enough
to wish to take it upon himself for the sake of another. (Religion, )

Are we then each forever laden with the guilt we have acquired by the
radical evil of our character? Is there no way in which we, past as well as
future, can become well-pleasing to God? Is hope for salvation mere illusion? Must all humankind look forward to endless punishment and exclusion from the kingdom of God (Religion, )?
No, says Kant. Though satisfaction must be rendered to Supreme
Justice, in whose sight no one who is blameworthy can ever be guiltless
(Religion, ), right there in the act of conversion we can spy the satisfaction rendered to divine justice (Religion, ).
The good principle is present quite as much in the desertion of the evil as in the
adoption of the good disposition, and the pain, which by rights accompanies the
former disposition, ensues wholly from the latter. The coming forth from the
corrupted into the good disposition is, in itself (as the death of the old man,
the crucifying of the esh), a sacrice and an entrance upon a long train of
lifes ills. These the new man undertakes in the disposition of the Son of God,
that is, merely for the sake of the good, though really they are due as punishments to another, namely to the old man (for the old man is indeed morally
another). (Religion, )

In short, the moral life here in this present existence of ours requires that
we repeatedly reject what promises to give happiness, in favor of the call
of duty. It requires that we choose sorrow and suering. It is this giving
up of happiness, this painful embrace of sorrow, that constitutes punishment for the guilt of our former adoption of an evil character.
But the person who, by strength of will, has undergone conversion and
thereby painfully entered a life of suering this pain making satisfaction for the guilt of the radical evil that characterized him or her before
conversion is not yet in the clear, not typically so, anyway. For though
ones heart may now be pure, it does not follow that all ones actions will
be pure. On the contrary, that person is called to moral progress. Good
characters come in varying degrees of strength (Religion, , , n). So
what is to be done about the guilt of the person of good character who
performs incidental acts of wrongdoing? Though the guilt of evil character may not haunt us throughout eternity, provided we change our heart,
will the guilt for evil actions do so, in particular, the guilt for evil actions
done subsequent to our conversion?

Inquiring about God

No, says Kant. Divine forgiveness will undo such guilt. In the rst
place, although the man (regarded from the point of view of his empirical nature as a sentient being) is physically the self-same guilty person as
before and must be judged as such before a moral tribunal and hence by
himself; yet, because of his new disposition, he is (regarded as an intelligible being) morally another in the eyes of a divine judge for whom this
disposition takes the place of action (Religion, ). And secondly, what
in our earthly life (and possibly at all future times and in all worlds) is
ever only a becoming (namely, becoming a man well-pleasing to God) is
credited to us exactly as if we were already in full possession of it
(Religion, ). Just as the punishment consisting in the pain of choosing
a good character wipes out the guilt one has acquired because of ones evil
character and the deeds that owed from it, so divine forgiveness wipes
out, for those who have a good but weak character, the guilt they acquire
as the consequence of episodically falling into evil actions.
This divine forgiveness of the evil deeds done by persons of good but
weak character, granted on the ground of their goodness of character
or as Kant puts it, this making good by God in consideration of an
upright disposition, the deciency of the deed (Religion, ) is called
by Kant an act of grace. Obviously in calling it this he is suggesting
that his account has captured an important dimension of Christianity.
It is questionable, however, whether there is anything at all gracious in
Gods act, as Kant conceives it. What Kant is doing, in his entire argument, is probing the implications of our human rights and obligations.
But something is an act of grace on someones part only if the rest of us
have no right to his or her performance of that act. If we have a moral
claim on someones doing something, then for that person to do that is
not for the person to act graciously but for the person to grant what is
due us. It is not to act graciously but to act justly. We may of course be
distressed over a persons failure to act graciously; perhaps the source

Cf. Religion, : We learn from this deduction that only the supposition of a complete change
of heart allows us to think of the absolution, at the bar of heavenly justice, of the man burdened
with guilt. (See also Religion, and n.)
Th is appears to be also how Kant understands grace. In one passage he says that a superiors
decrees conferring a good for which the subordinate possesses no legal claim but only the (moral)
receptivity is called grace (Religion, n). And in another he says that it is customary (at least
in the church) to give the name of nature to that which men can do by dint of the principle of
virtue, and the name of grace to that which alone serves to supplement the deciency of all our
moral powers and yet, because suciency of these powers is also our duty, can only be wished for,
or hoped for, and solicited (Religion, ). Kant does not indicate disagreement with this
customary practice.

Conundrums in Kants rational religion

of our distress is that we do not like what that failure reveals about the
persons character. But what it reveals is not a deciency in the acknowledgment of legitimate claims on him. Thus Kant cannot have it both
ways: he cannot hold that we can expect Gods forgiveness, since Gods
failure to forgive would violate the moral order of rights and obligations, and also hold that Gods granting of forgiveness is an act of grace
on Gods part. But since Kants project is to ground religion rationally
in the deliverances of morality, that is, in the structure of rights and
obligations, it is grace that will have to go. God must be understood in
the Kantian scheme as required to forgive. Of course this means that a
sizable gap begins to open between Christianity, on the one hand, and
Kants rational religion, on the other.
There is one passage that appears to say something quite dierent from
what I have just interpreted Kant as holding. It appears to say that even
those of good character do not have a moral claim on Gods forgiveness of
the guilt of their incidental wrongdoings. That passage reads:
That what in our earthly life (and possibly at all future times and in all worlds)
is ever only a becoming should be credited to us exactly as if we were already
in full possession of it to this we really have no legal claim, that is, so far as
we know ourselves and so the accuser within us would be more likely to propose a judgment of condemnation. Thus the decree is always one of grace alone,
although fully in accord with the divine justice, when we come to be cleared of
all liability by dint of our faith in such goodness; for the decree is based upon a
giving of satisfaction (a satisfaction which consists for us only in the idea of an
improved disposition, known only to God). (Religion, )

The language of this passage is scarcely lucid. But if we interpret Kant

as really holding that those of good character have no claim on Gods
forgiveness for their acts of incidental wrongdoing, then we would have
to conclude already that Kant has failed in his own project of grounding
faith in salvation in the domain of morality. Accordingly, I propose that
we take as the crucial clue for interpreting this passage the qualication
so far as we know ourselves, which follows the words to this we really
have no legal claim, along with the words at the end, known only to
God. It was one of Kants doctrines that one can never know with surety
whether one has a good character (cf. Religion, , ). If one does have
a good character, one does have a claim on divine forgiveness; the moral
order would be violated if such forgiveness were not forthcoming. In fact,
though, no one knows whether he or she has a claim on divine forgiveness, for no one knows whether he or she has such a character. Only God
knows.

Inquiring about God

A more serious question to raise about Kants appeal to divine forgiveness is why, in Kants scheme, God would ever do such a thing as
forgive. In the Christian vision, divine forgiveness, though indeed an
act of grace, is not unmotivated. It is grounded in Gods love. God, out
of love for Gods human creatures, transcends the entitlements of justice and forgives. Kant does, on occasion, speak of the love of God
toward men (Religion, ). That seems entirely gratuitous, though. In
the Kantian scheme, all we know of God is that God honors and ensures
the requirements of morality i.e., of rights and obligations. Kant himself emphasizes, indeed, that we must place Gods benecence not in
an unconditioned good will toward His creatures but in this, that He
rst looks upon their moral character, through which they can be wellpleasing to Him, and only then makes good their inability to fulll this
requirement of themselves (Religion, ). Here is Kants thought: to have
rejected ones evil character and chosen a good character is to be committed to an endless progress in goodness. Though for us it is impossible
to know with surety whether we have indeed adopted a good character,
Gods sight penetrates to the heart. If God sees there a good disposition,
then God judges the sequence of individual actions, ordered overall
in the direction of moral progress, as a completed whole (Religion,
); and God does this on account of the good disposition from
which this progress itself is derived (Religion, ). What is in fact ever
only a becoming is by God credited to us exactly as if we were already
in full possession of it (Religion, ) on the ground that because of
his new disposition, man is morally another in the eyes of God for
whom this disposition takes the place of action (Religion, ).
Kant distinguishes here between, on the one hand, the persons underlying character or disposition and, on the other, the persons sequence of
actions that, in the case of the person of good character, exhibits moral
progress. And he then says that God judges the moral ideal as attained , on
the ground that the underlying disposition is pure. There are two ways
of interpreting judges here. In one interpretation, God arms that the
person has reached perfection of action, and this because that persons
character is good. But this would be to attribute the armation of falsehood to God. I think, accordingly, that we should be extremely reluctant
to conclude that this is what Kant had in mind. The other interpretation
is that God, because of the persons purity of heart, treats the person as if
the persons actions had reached perfection.
This latter, more plausible, interpretation raises the question: Why
would God do a thing like that? Ultimately Kants answer has to be: the

Conundrums in Kants rational religion

person of pure heart has a claim on God to such treatment. If per

impossible God did not treat the person thus, the moral order would be
violated, subverted.
But, to understate the point, it is far from evident that this is so. Would
we be obligated, if we believed someone to be of good character, to treat
the person as if she had attained moral perfection in her actions thus to
practice Kantian forgiveness? It hardly seems so. But in the Kantian universe, God and humanity live under the same moral order.
Further, imagine two persons who have undergone conversion, one of
whom now lives in total consistency with her new maxim of character,
and the other of whom repeatedly falls into wrongdoing; the persons
character, though good, is weak. Surely the former is more virtuous. Can
it really be the case, in the Kantian scheme, that God is obligated to treat
these two alike? Would we be obligated to treat them alike?
But let us press on. Thus far I have spoken of divine forgiveness, in the
Kantian scheme, as consisting of Gods treating persons of good but weak
character as if they were of good and morally omnipotent character and
doing so simply on the ground of their goodness of character. But I do
not think that this is in fact how Kant thinks of forgiveness; nor would it
be sucient for his project to think of it thus. Kant describes forgiveness
as the undoing of guilt, as the wiping out of guilt. It is necessary that he
think of it thus. For he holds that in the Summum Bonum, happiness is
proportioned to worth; and he holds further that in the Summum Bonum
there is no limitation in principle on our attainment of moral perfection,
and hence of unadulterated happiness, in spite of the fact that we are all
wrongdoers. Indeed, Kant thinks of punishment the same way; it too
wipes out guilt.
Two things must be said about this. In the rst place, the claim seems
necessarily false. How can guilt possibly be removed, undone, wiped
out? If at some time one violates the moral law and becomes guilty for so
doing, then forever after it is the case that at that time one violated the
moral law and was guilty for so doing; one remains guilty for having done
so. And secondly, if in fact God wipes out the guilt for the evil actions
of the person of good character, on the ground of the persons goodness
of character, then in fact that person has attained the moral ideal in his
actions; and all of Kants insistences that the actions of the person of good
character are at best a matter of moral progress are just mistaken. Since
persons of good character have the guilt for their evil actions wiped out,
presumably as soon as they perform the evil actions, every such person
satises the moral ideal: there is no tinge of guilt about them.

Inquiring about God

Christianity also, of course, speaks much about forgiveness. But its

conception of forgiveness is dierent. To forgive a person is to declare
that the persons prior wrongdoing will not be held against her. It is to
declare that ones moral interactions with the person will be what they
would be if she had never done the ill deed. To forgive a guilty person is
not to declare that she is not guilty but to declare that the person will be
treated as not guilty. So too, punishment does not remove guilt. Rather,
when punishment is completed, the punished person is received back into
the community and treated as one not guilty. What Christianity claims
is that God, by an act of grace, forgives us, with the consequence that our
tness for membership in Gods kingdom is not judged by our moral status. Kant, by contrast, insists that our tness for Gods kingdom is always
judged by our moral status; accordingly he attributes to God the power of
making the person who is guilty not guilty.
We have in eect been noticing that Kants religion, so far from being
entirely rational, is riddled with irrationalities. That is true in yet one
more way. Kant repeatedly arms the Stoic maxim that a persons moral
worth is determined entirely by that person himself. Man himself, he
says, must make or have made himself into whatever, in a moral sense,
whether good or evil, he is or is to become (Religion, ). Yet it is essential
to Kants particular project of a rational religion that God be able to alter
our moral status for the better. Here, then, we have not just implausibility
or tension, but internal contradiction.
Kant himself was aware of the diculty. He says:
The concept of supernatural accession to our moral, though decient, capacity
and even to our not wholly puried and certainly weak disposition to perform
our entire duty, is a transcendent concept, and is a bare idea, of whose reality
no experience can assure us. Even when accepted as an idea in nothing but a

Further reections on these matters would do well to take account of this passage from Hannah
Arendts The Human Condition (University of Chicago Press, ), : The alternative to
forgiveness, but by no means its opposite, is punishment, and both have in common that they
attempt to put an end to something that without interference could go on endlessly. It is therefore quite signicant, a structural element in the realm of human aairs, that men are unable to
forgive what they cannot punish and that they are unable to punish what has turned out to be
unforgivable. Th is is the true hallmark of those oenses which, since Kant, we call radical evil
and about whose natures so little is known, even to us who have been exposed to one of their rare
outbursts on the public scene. All we know is that we can neither punish nor forgive such oenses
and that they therefore transcend the realm of human aairs and the potentialities of human
power, both of which they radically destroy wherever they make their appearance. I think that
Arendt quite clearly misunderstands Kants notion of radical evil. Yet her contention that only
what can be punished can be forgiven, and that there are some crimes which human beings cannot punish, is eminently worth considering.

Conundrums in Kants rational religion

practical context it is very hazardous, and hard to reconcile with reason, since
that which is to be accredited to us as morally good conduct must take place not
through foreign inuence but solely through the best possible use of our own
powers. (Religion, )

What then was Kants resolution, or attempted resolution, of the diculty? What he goes on to say is this:
the impossibility thereof (i.e., of both these things occurring side by side)
cannot really be proved, because freedom itself, though containing nothing supernatural in its conception, remains, as regards its possibility, just as
incomprehensible to us as is the supernatural factor which we would like to
regard as a supplement to the spontaneous but decient determination of freedom. (Religion, )

In eect, what Kant does here is appeal to what, in other passages,

he calls the mystery of atonement. We do not understand how God
could forgive guilt. Reason tells us that God will, but without presuming to determine the manner in which this aid will be given or to know
wherein it will consist: it may be so mysterious that God can reveal it
to us at best in a symbolic representation in which only what is practical is comprehensible to us (Religion, ). It seems clear, however,
that such an appeal is illegitimate here. To a rm the Stoic principle
is to a rm something that contradicts the claim that God wipes out
guilt. Our situation is not that we do not know how God wipes out
guilt. Our situation, given the Stoic principle, is that we know that
God does not.
Reason, says Kant, may conclude that in the inscrutable realm of
the supernatural there is something more than she can explain to herself, which may yet be necessary as a complement to her moral insuciency, and may further conclude that this is available to her good will
(Religion, ). Therein, Kant adds, we nd consolation.
Reason does not leave us wholly without consolation with respect to our lack of
righteousness valid before God. It says that whoever, with a disposition genuinely devoted to duty, does as much as lies in his power to satisfy his obligation

Kant himself, in one passage, spoke of these claims as contradicting each other: Man, as we know
him, is corrupt and of himself not in the least suited to that holy law. And yet, if the goodness
of God has called him, as it were, into being, i.e., to exist in a particular manner (as a member
of the kingdom of Heaven), He must also have a means of supplementing, out of the fullness of
His own holiness, mans lack of requisite qualications therefor. But this contradicts spontaneity
(which is assumed in all the moral good or evil which a man can have within himself), according
to which such a good cannot come from another but must arise from man himself, if it is to be
imputable to him (Religion, ).

Inquiring about God

(at least in a continual approximation to complete harmony with the law), may
hope that what is not in his power will be supplied by the supreme Wisdom in
some way or other (which can make permanent the disposition to this unceasing
approximation). (Religion, )

But surely this is an entirely hypothetical consolation: we can be assured

that if someone has a good will, that persons deciency in action will be
made good by God. Given that no one can be certain whether she has a
good will, the Kantian system gives no actual consolation to any actual
human being. Quite to the contrary. As Kant himself remarks, If this
question as to the verdict to be pronounced upon a person is addressed
to the judge within a man he will pronounce a severe verdict upon himself (Religion, ). The accuser within us would be more likely to
propose a judgment of condemnation (Religion, ). In the Kantian
scheme, this much is clear: for the unconverted there is no mercy.
It may be said that the tenability of the interpretation I have oered of
Kant, and of the criticisms I have lodged, requires ignoring the antinomy
to which Kant calls attention in Book III of Religion. So let us, in conclusion, look briey at that.
Either we must assume, says Kant, that the faith in the absolution
from the debt resting upon us will bring forth good life-conduct, or else
that the genuine and active disposition ever to pursue a good course of life
will engender the faith in such absolution according to the law of morally
operating causes (Religion, ). This, he says, is a remarkable antinomy of human reason with itself. He adds that its solution or adjustment can alone determine whether an historical (ecclesiastical) faith
must always be present as an essential element of saving faith, over and
above pure religious faith, or whether it is only a vehicle which nally
can pass over into pure religious faith (Religion, ).
It seems clear, however, that in Kants view this is not a true antinomy.
Indeed, he himself calls it only apparent (Religion, ). For though he
lays out both lines of thought for the view that atonement must precede
good life-conduct and for the view that good life-conduct must precede
atonement he makes it emphatically clear, as he has already in Book II,
that in his judgment only the latter is correct. It is quite impossible, he
says,
to see how a reasonable man, who knows himself to merit punishment, can in
all seriousness believe that he needs only to credit the news of an atonement
rendered for him, and to accept this atonement utiliter (as the lawyers say), in
order to regard his guilt as annihilated, indeed, so completely annihilated (to
the very root) that good life-conduct, for which he has hitherto not taken the

Conundrums in Kants rational religion

least pains, will in the future be the inevitable consequence of this faith and this
acceptance of the proered favor. No thoughtful person can bring himself to
believe this. (Religion, )

It is true, indeed, that the issue cannot be settled through insight into
the causal determination of the freedom of a human being, i.e., into the
causes which bring it about that a man becomes good or bad; hence it
cannot be resolved theoretically (Religion, ). But as a matter of fact,
says Kant, a reective person cannot bring himself to believe that atonement would be extended to the unconverted; that would be a violation of
our moral intuitions. Where shall we start, i.e., with a faith in what God
has done on our behalf, or with what we are to do to become worthy of
Gods assistance (whatever this may be)? In answering this question we
cannot hesitate in deciding for the second alternative (Religion, ).
In short, when Kants discussion of the antinomy is scrutinized,
it proves not to upset our interpretation but to conrm it. God, in the
Kantian system, wipes out the guilt of our wrongdoing if we present God
with a good character; God is, in fact, morally required to do so. We have
seen that such wiping out, if it were possible, would, in its indiscriminateness, raise a serious issue of justice. Further, we have seen that the
claim that God can alter our moral status conicts with Kants repeated
insistence that only we ourselves can do so. But in fact such wiping out
is not possible. Forgiveness is not the declaration that the guilty are no
longer guilty but the declaration that the guilty will no longer be treated
as guilty. Forgiveness, in that sense, is eminently possible. Often, when
it occurs, morality is transcended. The forgiven have no moral claim on
forgiveness; it comes to them as grace.
What Kant arms is that only the worthy are saved and that God, so
as to bring it about that some are saved in spite of the wrongdoing of all,
makes those of worthy character worthy in action as well. Kant arms
this without ever surrendering the armation that each can make only
himself or herself worthy. What Christianity arms is that the unworthy
are saved saved by the grace of divine forgiveness.

In defense of Gaunilos defense of the fool

I propose saying a good word on behalf of Gaunilo. He has not fared

well at the hands of history. While not himself a rst-rate thinker that
is clear from the brief text of his that has been preserved he undertook
to debate with one of the genius theologian-philosophers of the Western
tradition, namely, Anselm. Yet sometimes second- and third-rate thinkers
make good points against rst-rate thinkers. I shall argue that Gaunilo
made some telling points against Anselm though not, I readily agree,
in a rst-rate way. Anselm realized the tellingness of these points, so I
shall also argue. The sign of his realization, however, is not concession;
Anselm does not concede. The sign is rather bluster. Not even the saints
are sinless! Anselms glittering genius has made many reluctant to concede that Gaunilo made any telling points against him; his saintly reputation makes us all reluctant to concede that he concealed when he should
have conceded.
Suspicion rst arises when, in the course of reading the whole of
Gaunilos defense of the fool and the whole of Anselms reply, we look
to see why Anselm thinks Gaunilos argument for the existence in reality of an island, such that none more excellent can be conceived, is not a
good analogue to his own argument for the existence of that than which
nothing greater can be conceived. Its absurd to suppose that one could in
this way establish the existence of such an island. By oering this absurd
analogue, Gaunilo meant to show that something had gone wrong in
Anselms original argument. To defend himself, Anselm has to point out
why the nest conceivable island argument is not a good analogue. He
does nothing of the sort. Instead he blusters: With condence I reply: if
besides that than which a greater can be thought anyone nds for me

A few assessments concerning the relative strength of the arguments of Anselm and Gaunilo are
cited in Jasper Hopkins, Anselms Debate with Gaunilo, in Hopkins, ed., Anselm of Canterbury,
vol. IV (Toronto and New York: Mellen Press, ).

In defense of Gaunilos defense of the fool

|anything else| (whether existing in reality or only in thought) to which

he can apply the logic of my argument, then I will nd and will make
him a present of that lost island no longer to be lost (A ; ).
The only additional reference Anselm makes to Gaunilos analogue
occurs a few pages later when he says, with equal sarcasm: Do you see,
then, the respect in which you did rightly compare me with that fool who
wanted to assert the existence of Lost Island from the mere fact that its
description was understood? (A ; ). This remark reads as if it were the
conclusion to a passage in which Anselm points out the disanalogy. In
fact it is not that.
The passage opens with Anselm claiming that on a crucial point Gaunilo
has misunderstood him. Gaunilo, so Anselm says, has interpreted him as
working with the formula that which is greater than all others (quodest maius omnibus); in fact, says Anselm, he used the formula that than
which nothing greater can be conceived (aliquid quo nihilmaius cogitari
potest). The argument does not work if we use the former formula, only if
we use the latter. Perhaps Anselm is correct in this charge. But before we
conclude that he is, it is worth noting that in Section of his response,
Gaunilo, before he used the formula greater than all others, had used a
variant on Anselms own formula, namely, some such nature than which
nothing greater can be thought. In assessing the signicance of his move
from this formula to the other, it is relevant to note that at the beginning and end of Section of his response, Gaunilo uses the formula that
which is greater than all others that can be thought (illud maius omnibus quae cogitari possunt). This suggests that Gaunilo may have intended
the formula greater than all others (maius omnibus) as short for greater
than all others that can be thought (maius omnibus quae cogitari possunt),
rather than as Anselm interpreted it, namely, as short for greater than all
others that are (maius omnibus quae sunt). But if Gaunilo was not confused about the formula Anselm was using, then at least it seems that he
did not fully appreciate the precise role of the formula in the argument; if

Th roughout, I shall be using the translation by Jasper Hopkins, A New, Interpretive Translation of
St. Anselms Monologion and Proslogion (Minneapolis, MN: Arthur J. Banning Press, ). I do
so with some hesitation, since the translation is very interpretive indeed. But all translations are
interpretive; and Hopkins has certainly thought through the issues with care. (See, for example,
his very combative introduction.) Further, I have no objection to raise against his translation of
any of the passages that I cite. I shall use G as an abbreviation for the title of Gaunilos text,
On Behalf of the Fool, and A as an abbreviation for the title of Anselms text, Reply to
Gaunilo. Vertical slash marks within the quotations indicate places where Hopkins added words
or phrases to clarify the literal text. References to these works will be given parenthetically in the
text.

Inquiring about God

he had, it seems unlikely that he would have used an abbreviated formula

that is so easily interpreted in such a way as to be useless for the argument
(as it is for his own analogue). So although Anselm may not successfully
have identied a deciency in Gaunilos understanding, he has at least, we
may say, located a deciency.
After observing that he had worked with the formula that than
which nothing greater can be conceived, rather than with the formula
that than which nothing is greater, and that this dierence makes
all the dierence for his argument, Anselm observes that, since that
than which nothing greater can be conceived will of course be greater
than anything else, by demonstrating the existence of an entity of the
former sort one will have demonstrated the existence of an entity of the
latter sort. The passage then closes with the sharp ironic words quoted
above: Do you see, then, the respect in which you did rightly compare
me with that fool who wanted to assert the existence of Lost Island
from the mere fact that its description was understood? But why he
cannot rightly be compared to such a fool, Anselm has not said and
does not say.
Why would Anselm not have pointed out the disanalogy between his
argument for Gods existence and Gaunilos for the existence of a lost
island? I can think of just two reasons. One is that the lost island argument is so obviously not a good analogue that it would humiliate Gaunilo
and insult the reader to point out the disanalogy; better to let readers
discern it for themselves and allow Gaunilo to retain some dignity. The
other reason is that Anselm realized that there was no relevant disanalogy
to point out.
Most of Anselms readers down through the centuries have assumed
that it was the former of these possible reasons that was the actual one;
and very many of those of us who are teachers have undertaken to do
for our students what Anselm did not do for Gaunilo: we have undertaken to lay out the disanalogy that Anselm had in mind or what we
presume to be the disanalogy that we presume Anselm had in mind.
(In the past I have done so as well.) Of course in doing so we presuppose that the disanalogy is not obvious or that our students are fools
indeed!
A successful defense of this line of interpretation will have to overcome
two considerations that make it a priori implausible. For one thing, why

In the points made in this paragraph I am following closely Hopkins in Anselms Debate with
Gaunilo.

In defense of Gaunilos defense of the fool

the bluster? Why the sarcasm? If charity to the befuddled Gaunilo inspired
Anselms silence concerning the point of disanalogy, what inspired his
sharp bluster? Anselm remarks that It is easy even for someone of very
little intelligence to detect what is wrong with the other objections which
you raise against me on behalf of the Fool; and so, I thought I ought to
forego showing this (A ; ). But Anselm makes this sharp comment
after his rst reference to the analogue and before the second, in neither
of which, as we have seen, does he pinpoint the disanalogy. Furthermore,
he continues the comment as follows: But because I hear that they do
seem to some readers to avail somewhat against me, I will deal with them
briey.
Thus and this is the second consideration Anselm does not refrain
from pointing out Gaunilos errors, be they obvious or not. If one comes
straight from the cryptic crispness of chapters and of the Proslogion
to the paragraph in Anselms response to Gaunilo in which he blusters,
I will nd and will make him a present of that lost island no longer to
be lost, one might with some plausibility regard this as another example
of Anselms cryptic elegance. In fact his response to Gaunilo is as prolix
and repetitious as the Proslogion is economical and elegant. But if Anselm
belabors Gaunilos errors and presumed errors, why does he leave this
error unanalyzed? It makes one suspicious.
Then, too, there is something suspicious about Anselms opening
declaration that he will answer Gaunilo as a Catholic rather than as
a fool, a declaration that has its payo just a bit later when Anselm
says: But I make use of your faith and conscience as a very cogent
consideration |in support of| how false these |inferences| are ( A ; ).
[I]f that than which a greater cannot be thought is not understood or
thought and is not in the understanding or in thought, then, surely,
either () God is not that than which a greater cannot be thought or
() He is not understood or thought and is not in the understanding
or in thought. Of course Gaunilo is not one of the Psalmists fools;
he is a believer. So it would not be appropriate to answer him as a fool.
But why answer him as a Catholic, calling on his faith and conscience?
Why not answer him as a rational person, calling on his capacity to
grasp the self-evident?
Most readers of Anselm do not have these suspicions, whether because
they do not read enough of Anselms text, or because they are bewitched
by his towering reputation, or whatever; or, having them, they stie them.
I, having them, propose not stiing them, to see where they lead.

Inquiring about God

Gaunilo did more than oer an analogue to Anselms argument whose

absurdity was meant to persuade us that something had gone wrong
in the original argument. He tried to put his nger on what had gone
wrong. Let us begin, then, by looking at how he construed the argument. I have already conceded that Gaunilo probably did not fully see
why the argument would not work with the formula that than which
nothing is greater, why it required the formula that than which nothing
greater can be conceived. Gaunilos apparent lack of perceptiveness on
this point is one of the things that lead me to conclude that he was not a
rst-rate philosopher. But the error does not really make any dierence to
Gaunilos main points. So in my statement of his construal of the argument I shall correct for this error.
There is another point on which, so it appears to me, Gaunilos interpretation is in error, though Anselm does not challenge him on it and
though it, too, makes no dierence to the Gaunilo/Anselm dialectic.
Gaunilo attributes to Anselm the general principle that anything that
exists in reality is greater than anything that exists only in the understanding. So far as I can tell, Anselm never appeals to this general thesis
though, for all I know, he accepted it. (If he did, that would account for
his silence on the matter.) What he says is just that, since one can think
of that than which nothing greater can be conceived as existing in reality,
then, if it did exist only in the understanding, in thinking of it as existing
in reality one would be thinking of it as greater than it is. Here, too, in
my discussion I will correct for what seems to me an erroneous interpretation on Gaunilos part.
Gaunilo, I suggest, construed Anselms argument as the following:
() The Psalmists fool understands the words that than which nothing
greater can be conceived.
() If he understands the words that than which nothing greater can be
conceived, then he understands that than which nothing greater can be
conceived.
() If he understands that than which nothing greater can be conceived, then
at least in the understanding there exists that than which nothing greater
can be conceived.
() It is impossible that that which exists in the understanding, namely, that
than which nothing greater can be conceived, should exist in the understanding alone and not also in reality.

In defense of Gaunilos defense of the fool

() Therefore there exists in reality that than which nothing greater can be
conceived.
() This being cannot even be conceived not to exist.
Did Anselm accept this construal of his argument? He should have
and he did. That Anselm held claims () through () is clear from chapter
of Proslogion: when the Fool hears my words something than which
nothing greater can be thought, he understands what he hears. And what
he understands is in his understanding So even the Fool is convinced
that something than which nothing greater can be thought is at least in
his understanding; for when he hears of this |being|, he understands |what
he hears|, and whatever is understood is in the understanding (Proslogion
; ). In his reply to Gaunilo Anselm rearms these points:
And so, in the argument which you criticize I said that when the Fool hears the
utterance that than which a greater cannot be thought, he understands what
he hears. (Surely, if it is spoken in a language one knows, then one who does not
understand |what he hears| has little or no intelligence |intellectus|.) Next, I said
that if it is understood, |what is understood| is in the understanding. (Or would
what |I claim| to have been necessarily inferred to exist in reality not at all be in
the understanding?) (A ; )

As to the armation of () and the move from () to (), there can be no

doubt that in the second chapter of Proslogion Anselm has also armed
this and made this inference; in his reply he so repetitively rearms it and
so repetitively makes the inference again as to become tiresome: what
follows more logically than |this conclusion, viz.|: if that than which a
greater cannot be thought were only in the understanding, it would be
that than which a greater can be thought? But, surely, that than which
a greater cannot be thought is in no respect that than which a greater
can be thought (A ; ). We may take the following from Anselms
response as a crisp summary of points () through (): that than which
a greater cannot be is understood and is in the understanding and hence
is armed to exist in reality (A ; ). It is just as clear that in the third
chapter of Proslogion Anselm armed (). In his reply to Gaunilo he does
so again: anyone who thinks of this |viz., what cannot even be thought
not to exist| does not think that it does not exist. Otherwise, he would
be thinking what cannot be thought. Therefore, it is not the case that
that than which a greater cannot be thought can be thought not to exist
(A ; ).
One can easily think of analogues of () through (). Here is one: I
understand the words the golden mountain. If I understand those

Inquiring about God

words, then I understand the golden mountain. And if I understand the

golden mountain, then in my understanding, at least, there is a golden
mountain. Gaunilos ingenious move was to oer an example that
appears to be an analogue, not only of steps () to (), but of () and ()
as well: I understand the words the nest conceivable island. If I understand those words, then I understand the nest conceivable island. And
if I understand the nest conceivable island, then there must be the nest
conceivable island, at least in my understanding. Now suppose that this
nest conceivable island, which I understand, existed only in my understanding. I can conceive of it existing in reality; if it did so, it would
then be greater. But that which I understand and that exists in my understanding is the nest conceivable island. So this nest conceivable island,
which exists in my understanding, must also exist in reality.

Let us begin with a crucial terminological point that Gaunilo raises. A
condition of understanding something is that what is understood exists
in reality; from S understands x it follows that x exists in reality.
Correspondingly, then, it is proper to speak of understanding so-and-so
only if one believes that so-and-so exists in reality. If one does not believe
that Pegasus exists, then it would be inappropriate to speak of oneself
or anyone else as understanding Pegasus. However, it would not necessarily be inappropriate, when in that circumstance, to speak of someone
as thinking of or conceiving of (cogitare) Pegasus. In Gaunilos words: in
accordance with the proper meaning of this verb |viz., to understand|,
false things |i.e., unreal things| cannot be understood (nequeunt intelligi); but surely, they can be thought (cogitari) in the way in which the
Fool thought that God does not exist (G ; ). Perhaps the best way of
translating intelligere in contemporary English, so as to reect Gaunilos
point, is with the word know. One cannot know Pegasus, since Pegasus
does not exist; one can, though, conceive of, or think of, Pegasus.
Anselm concedes Gaunilos terminological point while at the same
time giving the impression of believing that nothing of importance
hangs on it. Without expressing any disagreement he says, speaking of
Gaunilo: you say that false |i.e., unreal| things cannot be understood,
in the proper sense of the word (A ; ). And just a bit later, making a
dierent though related point, he says: even if no existing things could
be understood not to exist, still they could all be thought not to exist
with the exception of that which exists supremely (A ; ). It is not

In defense of Gaunilos defense of the fool

to the distinction itself, but to the points Gaunilo makes by using the
intelligere/cogitare distinction, that Anselm raises his objections. So let us
turn to those.

Gaunilo uses his terminological point to object to line () of the argument. But when one says that this Supreme Being cannot be thought not
to exist, he might better say that it cannot be understood (nequeat cogitari)
not to exist or even to be able not to exist (G ; ). The general principle to which Gaunilo is alluding here can be expressed as follows: where
N is any nominative expression you please, the predicate understands
N to be so-and-so can be truthfully armed of someone only if N is
so-and-so, whereas it is possible for the predicate conceives N to be soand-so to be truthfully armed of someone even if N is not so-and-so.
Specically then, though the predicate understands (knows) God not
to exist cannot be truthfully armed of anyone, since God does exist,
there may well be persons of whom one can truthfully arm the predicate thinks of God as not existing. Accordingly, the thing to say, when
we arrive at line () of the argument, is not that one cannot think of, but
that one cannot understand, God as not existing. That God exists, and
even that God cannot fail to exist (G ; ), can be known; but God
cannot be known (understood) to not exist, nor even to possibly not exist
(non esse aut etiam posse non esse), since God does exist, and necessarily so.
Anselm sees clearly what Gaunilo is objecting to in this part of his argument, and he states the objection himself as follows: As for your claim
that when we say that this Supreme Thing cannot be thought not to exist
we would perhaps do better to say that it cannot be understood not to exist
or even to be able not to exist (A ; ).
However, says Gaunilo, it may be that there is an important limitation
on the scope of our ability to conceive of what does not exist and of what
is not the case; perhaps we can conceive of what does not exist or is not
the case only if we do not know that it exists or is the case. For example,
perhaps we can conceive of the non-existence of God only if we do not
know that God exists. I do not know whether, during the time when I
know most certainly that I exist, I can think that I do not exist (G ; ).
If our ability to think and conceive is in fact thus limited, then the person
who knows that the being than which nothing greater can be conceived
exists in reality will indeed nd himself or herself unable to conceive
or think of God as not existing (conceive or think of the non-existence

Inquiring about God

of God). But then, says Gaunilo, it must be observed that, contrary to

Anselms claim in Proslogion that anything that there is except God can
be conceived not to exist, everybody will nd the non-existence of many
things inconceivable specically, the non-existence of anything that the
person knows exists. Says Gaunilo: if I cannot |think that I do not exist|,
then this |property of not being able to be thought not to exist| will no
longer be a unique characteristic of God (G ; ). Depending, then, on
whether Anselm does or does not accept the suggested limitation on our
ability to conceive the non-existent, he must either concede that Gods
non-existence is not unique in its inconceivability, or that we can conceive of Gods non-existence. Anselm cannot have it both ways. What is
undoubtedly true, though, is that we cannot understand that God does
not exist.
In reply to this objection Anselm remarks that it is indeed true that
God cannot be known (understood) as not existing: nothing which
exists can be understood not to exist. For it is false that what exists does
not exist (A ; ). But if this is what he, Anselm, had said, he
would have laid himself open to exactly the same objection concerning
understanding that Gaunilo cites for conceiving (if the scope of that
is limited in the way Gaunilo suggested) the objection, namely, that
in the unknowability of Gods non-existence there is nothing unique.
It would not be a unique characteristic of God not to be able to be
understood not to exist ( A ; ). So the right thing to say is not that
the Supreme Being cannot be known not to exist, true though that is;
the right thing to say is rather what was said, namely, that the Supreme
Being cannot be thought or conceived not to exist in other words, that
its non-existence cannot be conceived. For if it could be thought not
to exist, it could be thought to have a beginning and an end. But this
|consequence| is impossible (A ; ).
Gaunilo would nd this last argument unimpressive. Whether or not
the suggested limitation on the scope of conceiving holds, the fool can
conceive of God as beginning and ending as well as not existing. And as
for us who know that God exists and is everlasting, we too can do so, if
the suggested limitation on the scope of conceiving does not hold. (The
dierent point may also be noted that there is nothing contradictory in
the concept of a being that has among its essential properties lacking a
beginning and lacking an end, but that yet exists contingently.)
Anselm goes on, however, to reject the limitation on the scope of our
power of conceiving that Gaunilo suggested and to propose another in its
place. Probably Gaunilos inclination to accept the suggested limitation

In defense of Gaunilos defense of the fool

on the scope of our power of conceiving was due to confusion on his part,
says Anselm. Concerning something that one knows to exist, one cannot
conceive that it does and does not exist ; we cannot think |it| to exist and at
the same time think |it| not to exist (A ; ). However, that is a dierent point from whether we can think of something as not existing while
knowing that it exists. But if one confuses the second phenomenon with
the rst, then one will be led to deny that many things which we know
to exist we think not to exist, and many things which we know not to
exist |we think| to exist (A ; ). The truth of the matter, so Anselm
suggests, is that we can conceive the non-existence of anything that exists
except for that which exists most truly of all and thus most greatly of
all (Proslogion ; ). All existing things can be conceived not to exist,
with the exception of that which exists supremely. Indeed, all and only
things which have a beginning or an end or are composed of parts and
whatever (as I have already said) at any place or time does not exist as a
whole can be thought not to exist. But only that in which thought does
not at all nd a beginning or an end or a combination of parts, and only
that which thought nds existing only as a whole always and everywhere,
cannot be thought not to exist (A ; ).
How shall we assess the outcome of the attack and defense concerning
line () of the argument? Gaunilo thinks that we can conceive of anything whatsoever as not existing, or perhaps instead, of anything whatsoever of whose existence we do not know. Either way, so he claims, Anselm
is not entitled to say, at the end of the argument, that that than which
nothing greater can be conceived is unique in that it alone among existing things cannot be thought (conceived) not to exist. Anselm replies that
we can conceive of anything whatsoever as not existing except for that
which exists in the highest degree (possible); its non-existence is uniquely
inconceivable. Ones estimate of the cogency of the ending of Anselms
argument will depend on ones estimate of the principle concerning the
scope of conceiving that he proposes in place of Gaunilos principle the
principle, namely, that one cannot conceive of the non-existence of that
which exists most truly (and that is, on that account, eternal, simple, and
always and everywhere a whole). But since the matters are dicult and
complex, and since Gaunilo has more interesting and decisive things to
say about other parts of the argument, I propose moving on and not trying to determine whether Gaunilo was correct in this part of his attack.

A full consideration of the matter would have to take into account what Anselm says about Gods
uniqueness in Proslogion and .

Inquiring about God

What is surprising for us in our century is that Anselm did not adopt
a dierent defense or rather, that he did not phrase this part of his
argument dierently in the rst place. Why did he not speak of its being
impossible that God not exist rather than of its being inconceivable that
God not exist? Of the necessity of Gods existence rather than of the inconceivability of Gods non-existence? Rather than claiming in Proslogion
that there can be thought to exist something which cannot be thought
not to exist; and this thing is greater than that which can be thought not
to exist (), why did Anselm not instead claim that it is possible to
think of a being that exists necessarily; and this is greater than one that
does not exist necessarily? Why allow oneself to get into these indecisive
arguments about the scope of our power of conceiving? It is often said or
assumed nowadays that by inconceivable Anselm just meant impossible.
Not only does the drift of the argument above make that implausible;
there are passages in which Anselm clearly distinguishes inconceivability
from impossibility: it is evident that |that than which a greater cannot
be thought| neither () fails to exist nor () is able not to exist nor () is
able to be thought not to exist (A ; ). Moreover, he himself on at least
two occasions states the argument in terms of impossibility rather than
inconceivability:
[I]f indeed it can be even thought, it is necessary that it exist. For no one who
doubts or denies that there exists something than which a greater cannot be
thought doubts or denies that if it were to exist it would neither actually nor
conceivably (nec actu nec intellectu) be able not to exist. For otherwise |i.e., if
it existed but in either respect were able not to exist| it would not be that than
which a greater cannot be thought. (A ; )
But it is evident that, likewise, that which is not able not to exist can be thought
and understood. Now, someone who thinks this thinks of something greater than
does someone who thinks of that which is able not to exist. (A ; )

Why did Anselm not evade Gaunilos criticism by preferring this argument? I do not know. Perhaps because he was in pursuit of Gods uniqueness; and in existing necessarily, God is not unique.

,
Gaunilo also uses his intelligere/cogitare distinction to raise an objection to the beginning of the argument. The objection can be put in
the form of a dilemma: when Anselm says that this thing is in my
understanding simply because I understand what is said (G ; ), he

In defense of Gaunilos defense of the fool

may be using the clause this thing is in my understanding as a mere

synonym of the clause I understand what is said with consequences
to be mentioned shortly. Alternatively, in using the word understanding in its proper sense (i.e., the sense discussed above), he may be
expressing two dierent propositions with these clauses, and claiming
that the proposition expressed by the one is entailed by that expressed
by the other. The consequences of this interpretation will also be noted
shortly.
Let me pause for a moment to note that what I have interpreted as
Gaunilos posing of a dilemma to Anselm if you understand intelligere
this way, then this follows, if that way, then that follows Anselm understands as Gaunilo contradicting himself. On most points, Anselm seems
to me an extremely accurate interpreter of Gaunilo; not on this. Here is
what Anselm says: How, I ask, are |these two statements| consistent?
viz., () that false things are understood and () that to understand is to
comprehend, with cognitive certainty, that a thing exists (A ; ). But
Gaunilos whole point has been to pose to Anselm a choice between two
dierent uses of intelligere.
Back to the dilemma. Suppose Anselm is using intelligere in such a way
that saying that one understands that than which nothing greater can be
conceived, and saying that that than which nothing greater can be conceived exists in ones understanding, are simply ways of saying that one
understands the meaning of the words that than which nothing greater
can be conceived. Then what is said with these locutions is indeed noncontroversial; but it will scarcely serve for the argument. The argument
depends on persuading us that there is a certain entity that even the fool
conceives or understands an entity distinct, of course, from the words;
and then going on to argue that that entity exists in reality and not only
in the understanding.
Alternatively, suppose Anselm understands intelligere in its proper
sense. Then, from the standpoint of the fool, point () of the argument is
just a begging of the question. The fool is in the position of not believing
that God exists; hence he will not concede that he understands (knows)
that than which nothing greater can be thought. One cant rst get the
fool to agree that he understands this being and then observe that it follows that this being exists in reality; one must rst get him to agree that
this being exists in reality, then perhaps one can get him to agree that he
understands it.
We may assume, however, that the fool would concede that we can
conceive or think of entities that dont exist and of states of aairs that are

Inquiring about God

not actual. Accordingly, the non-question-begging way to proceed would

be to try to establish that the fool, because he understands the meaning
of the words that than which nothing greater can be conceived, has a
conception of that than which nothing greater can be conceived; and that
done, to go on to try to establish, somehow, that he could not have this
conception without that than which nothing greater can be conceived
existing in his mind and bearing to him the relation of being conceived
by him, or even of being understood by him.
Before we consider what Gaunilo has to say about this proposed revision of Anselms argument, a revision designed to avoid begging the question against the fool, let us note that part of Anselms response to the
point made thus far is to oer a new ontological argument, this new one
formulated in exactly the style that Gaunilo recommended namely, in
terms of cogitare rather than intelligere, and making no reference at all to
things existing in the understanding. The clue that this is what he is doing
comes in Anselms sentences, Therefore, it is false |to suppose| that something than which a greater cannot be thought does not exist even though
it can be thought. Consequently, |it is| all the more |false to suppose that
it does not exist| if it can be understood and can be in the understanding
(A ; ). (It may be noted, parenthetically, that the ontological argument that Alvin Plantinga formulates and defends in his God, Freedom,
and Evil is a variant on this alternative argument, formulated in terms
of conceiving, rather than a variant on the original Proslogion argument
formulated in terms of understanding.) The basic thrust of the new argument can be gathered from this paragraph:
[W]ith condence I assert that if it can be even thought to exist, it is necessary
that it exist. For that than which a greater cannot be thought can be thought to
exist only without a beginning. Now, whatever can be thought to exist but does
not exist can be thought to exist through a beginning. Thus, it is not the case
that that than which a greater cannot be thought can be thought to exist and yet
does not exist. Therefore, if it can be thought to exist, |there follows| of necessity,
|that| it exists. (A ; )

- -

Let us return to Gaunilo. Gaunilo has suggested that to avoid begging
the question against the fool at the beginning of the argument, Anselm
should have used something like the following as steps (), (), and () in
the argument:

In defense of Gaunilos defense of the fool

(*) If one understands the words that than which nothing greater can be
conceived, then one has a conception of that than which nothing greater
can be conceived.
(*) If one has a conception of that than which nothing greater can be
conceived, then at least in ones conception (mind) there exists that than
which nothing greater can be conceived.
(*) It is impossible that that which exists in the fools mind, namely, that
than which nothing greater can be conceived, should exist in the mind
alone and not also in reality.
What does Gaunilo wish to say about this non-question-begging variation
on the original argument? He wishes to say two quite dierent things,
one of them, in my judgment, indecisive, the other entirely decisive. Let
us begin with the indecisive, quoting at some length what Gaunilo says:
|[I]n this way| I also |can| not |think of| God Himself (whom, surely, for this
very reason, I can also think not to exist). For neither am I acquainted with
this thing itself nor am I able to make inferences |about it| on the basis of some
other similar thing; for even you maintain that it is such that there cannot be
anything else similar |to it|. Now, suppose that I were to hear something being
said about a man totally a stranger to me |a man| whom I was not even sure
existed. Still, by means of the specic or generic knowledge by which I know
what a man is (or what men are), I would be able to think of him as well, by
reference to the very thing that a man is. But when I hear someone speaking
of God or of something greater than all |others|, I cannot have this thing |in
my thought and understanding| in the way that I might have that false thing
|i.e., that unreal man| in my thought and understanding. For although I can
think of that |non-existent man| by reference to a true |i.e., a real| thing known
to me, I cannot at all |think of| this |supreme| thing except only with respect to
the word. And with respect only to a word a true thing can scarcely or not at all
be thought of. For, indeed, when one thinks in this way |i.e., with respect to a
mere word|, he thinks not so much the word itself (i.e., not so much the sounds
of the letters or of the syllables), which assuredly is a true thing, as he does the
signication of the word that is heard. Yet, |the signication is| not |thought| in
the manner of one who knows what is usually signied by this word i.e., one
who thinks in accordance with the true thing, even if |it exists| in thought alone.
Rather, |the signication is thought| in the manner of one who does not know
that |which is usually signied by the word| but who thinks only () according to
the movement-of-mind that is brought about by hearing this word and () in the
fashion of one trying to represent to himself the signication of the word he has
heard. (But it would be surprising if he could ever |in this manner| discern the
true nature of the thing.) Therefore, it is still evident that in this way, and not at
all in any other way, this thing is in my understanding when I hear and understand someone who says that there is something greater than all |others| that can
be thought. (G ; )

Inquiring about God

Two distinct lines of thought are interwoven in this passage. The line
on which I shall focus rst, the indecisive line, goes as follows: God
cannot be understood by us; neither can we stand to God in the relation
of conceiving God. God is beyond our understanding and conceiving.
But we do in some way understand the words that than which nothing
greater can be conceived. Accordingly, understanding those words does
not require that one stand to that than which nothing greater can be conceived in the relation of conceiving of it and understanding it.
What is Anselms response? Begin with this:
For even if anyone were so foolish as to say that something than which a greater
cannot be thought does not exist, nevertheless he would not be so shameless as
to say that he cannot think or understand what he is saying. Or if some such
|impudent person| is found, not only is his word to be rejected but he himself is
to be despised. Therefore, with regard to whoever denies the existence of something than which a greater cannot be thought: surely, he thinks and understands
the denial he is making. And he cannot think or understand this denial without |thinking or understanding| its parts one of which is that than which a
greater cannot be thought. Therefore, whoever denies this |viz., that this being
exists| thinks and understands |the signication of| that than which a greater
cannot be thought. (A ; )

The point Anselm is making is clear, especially from that last sentence: if
we understood the words of some denite description, the K that is F,
then we have a conception of, and understand, the K that is F. But this
is the very principle that Gaunilo is calling into question calling into
question, for one thing, because it compromises the doctrine of Gods
unintelligibility; so far, Anselm has simply rearmed the principle without saying anything to answer Gaunilos scruples.
But let us look farther. What we would be inclined to say here is that
one may understand the words that than which nothing greater can be
conceived without there being that entity and without our standing to
it in the relation of conceiving or knowing or understanding it. But this
reply is not available to Anselm. For its clear from the passage just quoted
that, on his view, if one understands the words that than which nothing
greater can be conceived, then one conceives and understands the being
or entity than which nothing greater can be conceived. So this is what he
says in place of what we would have said:
Yet, even if it were true that that than which a greater cannot be thought could
not be thought or understood, nonetheless it would not be false that that than
which a greater cannot be thought can be thought and understood. Nothing
prevents our saying |the word| unsayable, even though that which is called
unsayable cannot be said. Moreover, we can think |the concept| unthinkable,

In defense of Gaunilos defense of the fool

even though that which it besuits to be called unthinkable cannot be thought.

By the same token, when that than which nothing greater can be thought
is uttered, without doubt what is heard can be thought and understood, even
if that thing than which a greater cannot be thought could not be thought or
understood. (A ; )

By itself, this passage is baing. Anselm appears to want to have it both

ways. He wants to arm that God is beyond our conceiving and understanding; yet it is crucial to his argument that we not just understand the
words that than which nothing greater is conceivable, but conceive and
understand the being than which nothing greater is conceivable. Or rather,
perhaps he thinks of understanding the words as conceiving and understanding the being.
Clearly the solution Anselm had in mind is that, though none of us
fully conceives and understands the being than which nothing greater can
be conceived, even the fool conceives or grasps that being well enough to
deny of it that it exists and hence well enough for the purposes of the
argument. This is what he says to Gaunilo:
Dont you think that that thing about which these |statements| are understood
can to some extent be thought and understood, and to some extent can be in
thought and in the understanding? For if it cannot |be thought or understood|,
then the foregoing |statements| cannot be understood about it. But if you say
that what is not fully understood is not understood and is not in the understanding, then say |as well| that someone who cannot stand to gaze upon the most
brilliant light of the sun does not see daylight, which is nothing other than the
suns light. Surely, that than which a greater cannot be thought is understood
and is in the understanding at least to the extent that the foregoing |statements|
are understood about it. (A l; )

(In chapter of his response, Anselm goes about trying to show how we
could actually arrive at this conception of God, which, while adequate, is
not thorough.)
To the fool Anselm must argue, without any appeal to the faith, that if
one understands the words that than which nothing greater is conceivable, then one stands to the entity than which nothing greater is conceivable in the relation of conceiving of it. To the Catholic, however, he can
dispense with his theory as to what goes into understanding words and
simply argue that it is an implication of the faith that we have a conception (and understanding) of God. This, then, is the signicance of his
saying that he will answer Gaunilo as a Catholic rather than as a fool:
But I contend that if that than which a greater cannot be thought is not understood or thought and is not in the understanding or in thought, then, surely,

Inquiring about God

either () God is not that than which a greater cannot be thought or () He is

not understood or thought and is not in the understanding or in thought. But I
make use of your faith and conscience as a very cogent consideration |in support
of| how false these |inferences| are. (A ; )

Anselm clinches the point later: But if a Catholic makes this denial, let
him remember that the invisible things of God (including His eternal
power and divinity), being understood through those things that have
been made, are clearly seen from the mundane creation (A ; ). In
short, the Catholic should accept points (*) and (*) in the revised argument even if the inferences from () to (*) and from (*) to (*) are not
acceptable.
It would appear that Anselm has the better of this part of the interchange. Why should it not be that, though our cognitive grasp of God is
woefully inadequate when measured against the reality of God, nonetheless it is good enough for us to be able to say and believe things about
God? We do not know what Gaunilo thought about this part of Anselms
response; so far as I can see, a Catholic would have to accept it. But
Gaunilo has another line of thought up his sleeve; and this, I think, is
decisive. Compared to this new line of thought, everything so far has
been preliminary skirmishing.
:
The rather lengthy passage quoted from Gaunilo contains, or at least hints
at, a line of thought distinct from the one just canvassed. It can be seen as
presenting Anselm with a new dilemma, this one a dilemma pertaining
to Gaunilos proposed variant on Anselms original argument. The presentation of the dilemma requires distinguishing two dierent phenomena
called conceiving (thinking). If one understands some expression in
particular, some denite description then it might appropriately be said
of one that one has a conception; if I understand the expression the earths
moon, then I have a conception of the earths moon. But we must distinguish two dierent acts, or states, called conception. The phenomenon
sometimes called conceiving consists of having a cognitive grip on that
which the words signify or as we in our century would put it, on that
which the words refer to, or stand for, or designate. The phenomenon at
other times called conceiving consists, rather, says Gaunilo, of imagining for ourselves, or representing to ourselves, a signication of the words.
We might call these two kinds of conceiving, respectively, R-conceiving
(R for reality), and I-conceiving (I for imagination). R-conceiving will not

In defense of Gaunilos defense of the fool

dier, in any way relevant to our discussion here, from understanding.

Let me quote that part of Gaunilos passage that makes this point most
directly:
For, indeed, when one thinks in this way, |i.e., with respect to a mere word|, he
thinks not so much the word itself (i.e., not so much the sound of the letters
or of the syllables), which assuredly is a true thing, as he does the signication
of the word that is heard. Yet, |the signication is| not |thought| in the manner of [R-conceiving, that is, of] one who knows what is usually signied by
this word i.e., one who thinks in accordance with the true thing, even if |it
exists| in thought alone. Rather, |the signication is thought| in the manner of
[I-conceiving, that is, of] one who does not know that |which is usually signied
by the word| but who thinks only () according to the movement-of-mind that is
brought about by hearing this word and () in the fashion of one trying to represent to himself the signication of the word he has heard. (G ; )

Of course, we who come after Frege would want to say that the relevant
distinction is not that between knowing the referent of an expression and
imagining a referent, but that between knowing the referent of a word and
knowing the sense of the word. Though Gaunilo is groping in the right
direction, he doesnt have a rm hold on that for which he is groping.
But back to Gaunilos proposed variant on Anselms argument, with
Gaunilos distinction in hand between two kinds of conceiving. We may
agree that if the fool understands the words that than which nothing
greater can be conceived, then he has a corresponding conception. But
what shall we understand this conception as being, a case of R-conceiving
or a case of I-conceiving? The tacit assumption of the argument is that
it consists of conceiving that which the denite description signies or
refers to namely, that than which nothing greater can be conceived. In
short, the tacit assumption of the argument is that it consists of a case
of R-conceiving. But why, says Gaunilo, would the fool grant that that
is what he is doing? Why would he not insist that, so far as he knows,
all he does when he hears the words and understands them is imagine
a signication? Why would he not insist that, so far as he knows, it is
I-conceiving that he is engaged in? We do, after all, speak of thinking
about Pegasus, conceiving of the golden mountain, and so on conceiving of things that dont exist. Such conceiving is not to be analyzed as
consisting of standing in the relation of conceiving to what the expression
refers, since the expression doesnt refer to anything. It consists of hearing and understanding the expression and imagining a referent. Thus the
issue of whether the entity to which the expression refers exists only in the
mind or also in reality does not even arise since it is not granted that the
expression refers to anything.

Inquiring about God

I suggest, in short, that Gaunilos fundamental objection to his nonquestion-begging variant on Anselms argument is that the kind of conception that the fool will grant that he has is of no use for the argument,
and that the kind of conception that is needed for the argument the fool
will not grant that he has. The fool will resist the move from (*) to (*).
It might be thought that I am over-interpreting what Gaunilo has to
say about conception in the passage quoted or if not that, basing too
much on too little. But Gaunilo makes the same point in other passages.
Referring to the passage from Proslogion in which Anselm says that a
painting rst exists in the mind of the artist and then is made by the
artist to exist in reality, Gaunilo says this: before that painting is made
it exists in the painters art. And such a thing in the art of the painter
is nothing other than a part of the painters understanding (G ; ).
Notice that last phrase: is nothing other than a part of the painters understanding. By contrast, when genuine knowledge or understanding takes
place, then whatever true |i.e., real| thing, when heard of or thought of, is
apprehended by the understanding: without doubt that true thing is other
than the understanding by which it is apprehended (G ; ). One
can indeed say that understanding the words of some denite description
the K that is F requires having a conception of the K that is F; but its
not true that the type of conceiving required consists of performing the
mental act of conceiving that entity for which those words stand. Thus
it is that Gaunilo says: I do not concede to it any other existence than
that |existence| (if it is to be called existence) present when the mind tries
to represent to itself a thing completely unknown, |trying to do so| in
accordance with a word which it has merely heard (G ; ).
We understand the expression the golden mountain. So we may be
described as having a conception of the golden mountain. Thus it may be
said that we have conceptions of things that dont exist. But we must not
fall into the trap of supposing that there are those things that there is
a non-existent golden mountain and that for one to have a conception
of the golden mountain is for there to be a golden mountain and for one
to stand to that entity in the relation of conceiving it. How, then, from
the |alleged| fact that it is, patently, greater than all |others| does one
prove to me that that |which is| greater |than all others| exists in reality? For I still so doubt and deny it to exist that I claim that this greater
|than all others| is not even in my thought and understanding even in
the way that numerous doubtfully real and uncertainly real things are
(G ; ). One may understand the words the present king of France,
and have what is appropriately called a conception of the present king of

In defense of Gaunilos defense of the fool

France, without there being the present king of France in any mode of
being whatsoever.
My use of this example, along with the example of the golden mountain, is obviously meant to suggest that the fundamental topic of dispute
between Gaunilo and Anselm was a topic of dispute again in the twentieth century between (among others) Meinong and the early Russell on the
one hand, and Frege on the other. Meinong is the Anselm of the twentieth century, Frege the Gaunilo. A singular term, said Frege, may have a
sense without having a reference; and to understand a singular term is, in
general, to understand its sense, not to understand its reference. It is not
inappropriate to say, of someone who understands the singular term the
golden mountain, that this person has a conception of the golden mountain. But this is to be understood as consisting in grasping the sense of the
expression, not in grasping its reference. It has no reference to be grasped.
After citing a singular term that has no reference, Michael Dummett,
speaking for Frege, says that:
Such an expression has a sense because we have a criterion, perhaps quite sharp,
at any rate at least as sharp as for most names having a genuine reference, for
an objects being recognized as the referent of the name: but it lacks a reference,
because as a matter of fact there is nothing which would identify any object as
the referent of the name; there is no object which satises the condition determined by the sense for being its referent. What could be more straightforward?

Of course, Gaunilo does not distinguish between the sense and the reference of expressions in the articulate way that Frege does. And Frege would
never have said that the grasping of the sense of an expression is nothing
other than a part of the understanding itself; the senses of expressions are,
on Freges view, objective features of language. But then, Anselms alternative account of linguistic understanding and conception was scarcely
less primitive than Gaunilos; it remained for Meinong to develop an
ontology in which, of all the entities that there are, some exist in reality
and some do not.
Yet, primitive and unacceptable though Gaunilos account of linguistic understanding and conception was, it was adequate for his polemical question: Why assume that if one understands the words that than
which nothing greater is conceivable, then there is that than which nothing greater can be conceived and one stands to it in the relation of conceiving? Other accounts than this can be given of what goes on when

Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language, nd edn. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, ), .

Inquiring about God

we understand singular terms and have conceptions. One doesnt have to

suppose that every genuine term has a referent and that to understand the
term is to cognitively grasp the referent.

Anselm saw clearly the point in the argument to which Gaunilo was
lodging his objection. Here is one among other indications of that: you
say that something than which a greater cannot be thought is in the
understanding in no other way than |as something| which cannot even
be thought in accordance with the true nature of anything (A ; ).
We have already seen part of Anselms reply: to understand the words
that than which nothing greater can be conceived is to have a conception of that which these words signify (stand for) namely, that than
which nothing greater can be conceived. The rest of his reply goes as
follows:
[F]rom the fact of its being understood, there does follow that |it| is in the understanding. For what is thought is thought by thinking; and with regard to what
is thought by thinking: even as it is thought, so it is in |our| thinking. Similarly,
what is understood is understood by the understanding; and with regard to
what is understood by the understanding: even as it is understood, so it is in the
understanding. What is more obvious than this? (A ; )

The reply is clear; Anselm rearms the very principles under dispute and
then adds that they are self-evidently true. But what is the import, in the
polemic, of the reply? I see no other way of interpreting its import than
as follows: Gaunilo has uncovered a weak point in Anselms ontological
argument, a crucial weak point; and Anselm has nothing to say in his
own defense. So he rearms his conviction that the principles under
dispute are self-evidently true, and leaves it at that. He says nothing at
all to support his conviction. Not until the twentieth century would the
dispute be substantially advanced beyond where Gaunilo and Anselm
left it Gaunilo questioning Anselms theory of linguistic comprehension and conception and oering suggestions for an alternative theory,
Anselm claiming that the original theory (itself not much more than suggestions) was self-evidently true. But let us be clear on the structure of the
polemic: since it was Anselm who gave the argument, the burden of proof
was on him. He did not bear the burden.
Let me summarize Gaunilos major objection, using mainly his own
words: If that which cannot even be thought in accordance with the true
nature of anything must |nonetheless| be said to be in the understanding,

In defense of Gaunilos defense of the fool

then I do not deny that in this |improper| sense it is in my |understanding| (G ; ). That is to say: if all you mean by having so-and-so in the
understanding is having a conception of so-and-so, then even things that
could not exist can be in the understanding.
But since from this |concession| its existence also in reality cannot at all be
inferred, I still will not at all concede to it that existence |in reality| until |that
existence| is proved to me by an indubitable line of reasoning. Now, anyone who
says, that which is greater than all |others| exists, |for| otherwise it would not
be greater than all |others| does not pay enough attention to whom he is speaking. For I do not yet admit indeed, I even doubt and deny that that |which
is| greater |than all others| exists at all in reality. I do not concede to it any other
existence than that |existence| (if it is to be called existence) present when the
mind tries to represent to itself a thing completely unknown, |trying to do so| in
accordance with a word which it has merely heard. (G ; )

And now, nally, what, given Anselms assumptions, is wrong with this
analogous argument? I understand the meaning of the words an island
than which none greater can be conceived. If someone understands those
words, then that person understands (or conceives of) an island than
which none greater can be conceived. And if someone understands (or
conceives of) an island than which none greater can be conceived, then
that island exists in the mind. But if that island existed only in the mind,
then one could conceive of it as greater. But that one, the one which exists
in the mind, is that island than which none greater can be conceived.
Therefore it exists in reality.
I submit that the argument is fully analogous to Anselms, and that
the reason Anselm failed to point out the disanalogy is that he realized
there was no disanalogy to point out. Anselm displayed an implication of
Meinongianism that he liked; Gaunilo, one that everyone nds embarrassing. Of course, there are variants on Anselms argument to which the
corresponding variant on Gaunilos lost island argument is not a good
analogue. But Gaunilo was not oering an analogue to all possible variations on Anselms argument; he was oering an analogue to Anselms
argument. The analogue is apt. The absurdity of its conclusion shows that
something has gone wrong in Anselms argument. Gaunilo oered a suggestion as to what that was. Anselm rearmed the principles to which
Gaunilo took exception and declared them self-evident, having nothing
to say in their support. The monk from Marmoutiers deserves better from
history than he has received. He saw that Anselms argument in Proslogion
depended on taking meaning to be reference; and he saw that meaning
is not reference.

Inquiring about God

As for the other parts of Anselms treatise, they, said Gaunilo, are
argued so truthfully, so brilliantly, |so| impressively, and, indeed, abound
with such great usefulness and with such great fragrance (because of an
innermost scent of devout and holy aection) that they are not at all to
be despised on account of the things which in the beginning parts are
rightly sensed but less cogently argued (G ; ).

Divine simplicity

Once upon a time, back in the so-called middle ages, theologians, Jewish,
Christian, and Muslim alike, in developing their doctrine of God, gave
extraordinary prominence to the attribute of simplicity. God, they said,
is simple; in God there are no distinctions whatsoever. I am not aware of
any theologian in these three traditions contending that Gods simplicity ought to be prominent in ones religious consciousness, in the way,
for example, that it appears to have been prominent in the religious consciousness of Plotinus. It was, instead, theoretical prominence that they
gave it.
For one thing, they recognized its theoretical fecundity. If one grants
Gods simplicity, then one also has to grant a large number of other
divine attributes: immateriality, eternity, immutability, having no unrealized potentialities, etc. Aquinas, in his earlier Summa contra gentiles,
still argued for Gods eternity, immateriality, and lack of passive potency
before he introduced Gods simplicity. By the time he wrote his later
Summa Theologiae he had fully recognized the theoretical fecundity of
this attribute and moved it up to the top of the list, introducing it immediately after he had established the existence of a rst mover. Secondly,
the doctrine of divine simplicity had, for the medievals, extraordinary
framework signicance. If one grants that God is simple, ones interpretation of all Gods other attributes will have to be formed in the light of
that conviction. Of course the fecundity of this attribute for deriving others of Gods attributes, and its framework signicance, are quite beside
the point unless one has good reason for holding that God is simple. The
medievals thought they had such good reason.
A theology structured by moving from Gods existence immediately
to Gods simplicity and then on to Gods other attributes seems part of a
quaint and bygone era for anyone reared on twentieth-century theology.
Contemporary theologians seldom speak of Gods simplicity. And when
they do, they rarely (if ever) give it a signicant structural role in their

Inquiring about God

doctrine of God let alone give it the pre-eminent role that it enjoyed
in the articulated doctrine of God developed by the medieval school
theologians.
I shall not on this occasion ask why this striking alteration has taken
place in the mode of structuring theology partly because, though I nd
the question intriguing, I am far short of knowing the answer. I suspect
that a full answer would illuminate, down to a deep level, the dierences
between contemporary theology and medieval school theology. But I am
more in need of illumination on that score than able to give illumination.
On this occasion I want to pursue the answer to a dierent question suggested by the dierence between medieval and contemporary attitudes
toward the doctrine of simplicity. And from here on I shall speak mainly
of Christian philosophical theology.
The doctrine that God is simple was understood by the medievals as
the denial of any form of composition in God. In his Summa Theologiae
Aquinas, before drawing the general conclusion that God is simple, dismisses various specic modes of composition. He argues, among other
things, that:
() God is not distinct from Gods essence;
that:
() Gods existence is not distinct from Gods essence;
and that:
() God has no property distinct from Gods essence.
Since I shall want to refer to these three theses rather frequently in what
follows, let me, for convenience sake, call them the theistic identity claims.
In the Thomistic texts there is no sign none of which I am aware,
anyway that Aquinas found anything ontologically problematic in these
claims. He marshals arguments for them. He does not toss them out as
self-evident. But he gives no sign of baement over how it can be that
something would be identical with its essence, nor over how it can be that
that entitys existence would be identical with its essence, nor over how it
can be that all its properties are identical with its essence (and hence, that
its essence itself has no complexity).
Though Aquinas gave no sign of nding anything problematic in the
theistic identity claims as such, when he combined those claims with certain other convictions of his, he experienced baement aplenty. Aquinas
found himself, by virtue both of his construal of his biblical inheritance

Divine simplicity

and his acceptance of certain arguments from his Greek inheritance, as

committed to the propositions that:
() God is omniscient;
and that:
() God is omnibenevolent.
Further, it seemed to him that in predicating omniscience of God, one
is predicating of God something other, for example, than omnibenevolence; and that in predicating either of these of God, one is predicating of
God something other than existence. But how can one give an intelligible account of these predications without assuming that there is in God
Gods goodness and Gods wisdom, distinct from each other and from
Gods existence? To assume this, however, would be agrantly to compromise Gods simplicity. Aquinas struggled, then, to nd a way of accounting for the predications that his biblical and Greek inheritance required
him to make of God that would preserve the distinctness of these predications without compromising Gods simplicity.
Second, Aquinas struggled to show that the doctrine of divine simplicity
is not in contradiction with other doctrines that he felt required to arm.
For example, Aquinas held, on the basis of his biblical inheritance, that:
() God has free choice.
But it was far from clear how this is compatible with the claim that God
has no properties distinct from Gods essence i.e., that God has no accidents, either essential or contingent. Likewise, it was not at all clear how
the doctrine of simplicity is compatible with the doctrine that:
() God is triune.
To the best of my knowledge it was the same for all other medieval philosophers and theologians though here I stand to be corrected by those
whose acquaintance with medieval thought goes beyond my own. When
Marilyn Adams, in her ne book on Ockham, reviews the medieval
debates over simplicity through Ockham, the debates she reports occur,
so far as I can tell, only at the point of Aquinas baement. Some of the
medievals gave a dierent ontological construal of the theistic identity
claims than Aquinas gave; but none, so far as I can see, found anything
especially baing in those claims as such.

William of Ockham, vols. (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, ).

Inquiring about God

For most of us contemporary philosophers the situation is strikingly

dierent. Our baement does not arise only when we reach the point
where we have to nd a theory of predication that, without compromising the doctrine of simplicity, accounts for how we can say a multiplicity
of distinct true things about God, or when we reach the point where we
have to show the compatibility of the doctrine of simplicity with other
doctrines. It arises already with this trio of ontological claims. How could
any substance possibly be its essence, we ask? Maybe a property could be
its essence though even that merits careful reection. But how could
something that is not a property be its essence? And how could such an
entitys essence be its existence? And how could all its properties be identical with its essence? We have no diculty in repudiating some modes
of composition in God for example, that God is composed of matter.
But those three theistic identity claims seem to many, if not most, of us
incoherent.
There are some who do not confess to seeing any diculty. Stump
and Kretzmann in their article Absolute Simplicity concentrate on the
advantages and disadvantages of accepting the doctrine of divine simplicity. They think the most important reason for hesitating to accept it is
the apparent incompatibility of the doctrine with Gods free choice. They
then argue that Aquinas had a way of harmonizing Gods simplicity with
whatever someone who accepts the biblical tradition would want to say
about Gods choice. As they see it, this leaves the theologian in the situation where there are no signicant reasons for not accepting the doctrine,
whereas there are signicant theoretical advantages in accepting it.
Admittedly this is a considerably less ringing endorsement of the doctrine than the medievals customarily gave it. Nonetheless, in their discussion I nd no sign that Stump and Kretzmann nd the theistic identity
claims problematic. For them the only question is whether those claims,
and the other claims making up the doctrine of simplicity, should be
accepted.
Why would a medieval thinker nd the theistic identity claims ontologically non-problematic, whereas so many of us nd them inscrutable
or incoherent? That is the question whose answer I want to pursue. The
answer I shall oer is that we have here a clash between two fundamentally dierent ontological styles; if we are to understand and engage the
medievals on this matter, we shall have to enter imaginatively into their
ontological style and then debate, among other things, the tenability of

Faith and Philosophy (): .

Divine simplicity

these two dierent styles. We need, if you will, a paradigm shift. Metaontology is what is needed. Possibly the reason Stump and Kretzmann
nd nothing problematic in the doctrine is that they, being medieval
scholars themselves, do their thinking in terms of this alternative ontological style.
I am also inclined to think that we will never succeed in nding a
satisfactory non-trivial formulation of the doctrine of divine simplicity in
our own dominant contemporary ontological style. But I see no way of
defending this thesis; for all I know, it might be the case that right over
the horizon is a creative discussion by someone who proves that it can be
done by doing it. Hence I shall content myself with the less daring thesis,
that to understand the medievals we must enter imaginatively into a style
of ontology dierent from that which is dominant among us.
But rst, what exactly are the diculties that we have with the identity
claims? Alvin Plantinga has canvassed them lucidly in his book Does God
Have a Nature? A substances essence, says Plantinga, will be a certain
one of its properties that conjunctive property that includes as conjuncts
those properties that the substance has in all possible worlds in which it
exists. So if God is identical with Gods essence, then God is identical
with a property. But God, being a person, is not a property.
That is the most fundamental diculty. But Plantinga also nds difculties in roughly the region where Aquinas and most medievals found
them. Let us suppose that God has the attributes of omniscience and
omnibenevolence. Now the theistic identity claims entail that all Gods
attributes are identical with God and, hence, with each other. But surely
omniscience and omnibenevolence are not the identical property; and if
either were identical with God, then, once again, God would be a property, which God is not.
These moves are so simple, swift, and decisive, that Plantinga acknowledges that what he has refuted must not be what the medievals meant. So
he tries again. The medievals speak of Gods goodness, Gods existence,
Gods power, Gods wisdom, etc. Maybe in speaking thus they did not
mean to refer to properties. Maybe with the expression Gods goodness
they did not intend to refer to that property of goodness that God has.
Maybe with the expression Gods existence they did not intend to refer
to that property of existence that God has, and so forth. Maybe they
intended to pick out entities of some other ontological category. Perhaps,

Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, .

Cf. Does God Have a Nature?, .

Inquiring about God

says Plantinga, they intended to pick out states of aairs, relationships.

Perhaps with the locution Gods wisdom they intended to pick out the
state of aairs of Gods being wise; with the locution Gods goodness,
the state of aairs of Gods being good, etc.
One challenge facing us immediately, in working out this suggestion,
is to nd a criterion of identity/diversity for states of a airs that is both
plausible in its own right and has the consequence that Gods wisdom is
identical with Gods goodness, with Gods existence, etc. Plantinga formulates a criterion, modies it in the light of an objection, and raises an
objection to the modication. Then he drops the matter. For even if we
nd a satisfactory criterion, we would be left with this deep diculty: on
this account, God is identical with a certain state of aairs. But, says
Plantinga, If God is a state of aairs, then he is a mere abstract object
and not a person at all; he is then without knowledge or love or the power
to act. But this is clearly inconsistent with the claims of Christian theism
at the most basic level.
At the point where Plantinga drops the matter, William Mann picks it up
in his paper titled Divine Simplicity. Perhaps, says Mann, we should look
once again at what the medievals had in mind by their locutions Gods
existence, Gods wisdom, Gods goodness, etc. Perhaps it was not
abstract objects like states of aairs that they had in mind. Perhaps they
had in mind what may be called property instances. (Property instances are
what I called cases in my On Universals; they are what D. C. Williams
called abstract particulars, and tropes. They are Aristotles entities present in
something. And at least some of them are what the medievals called qualia.)
Suppose that Socrates had the property of wisdom. Then we can say that
whereas Socrates was an exemplication of wisdom, Socrates wisdom
was an instance of it. And as to the relation of the person Socrates to the
property instance, Socrates wisdom, perhaps Aristotles phrase is as good as
any: Socrates wisdom is present in Socrates. As his reason for thinking that
property instances are not states of aairs Mann says this: It is claimed by
the friends of states of aairs that all states of aairs exist, but only some of
them obtain or are actual.This feature does not hold for property instances.
In order for a property instance to exist, it must be actual: some existing
thing must either exemplify it or be it.
Two fundamental challenges face this proposal. By now we can guess
what they are. We need a criterion of identity/diversity for property

Does God Have a Nature?, .

Divine Simplicity, .

Religious Studies (): .

Divine simplicity

instances that is both plausible in its own right and whose consequences
are consistent with the theistic identity claims. And we must be assured
that Gods being a property instance is not incompatible with Gods having the properties that we want to predicate of God. Mann faces up to
both these challenges; but let me, on this occasion, rush past what he
says about the identity and diversity of property instances to get to what
he says on the issue of whether Gods being a property instance would
be compatible with our convictions as to what God is like. Mann formulates the challenge to his view thus: this conclusion oends against
deeply entrenched theistic belief that God is knowing, loving, and active.
In brief, God is a person; no property instance is a person; therefore God
is not a property instance. Given the theists beliefs about the personhood
of God, the doctrine of divine simplicity must be rejected.
Manns way of answering this objection is to argue that one of the
principles assumed in the objection, viz., that no property instance is
a person, is false. Take anything whatsoever, says Mann, and consider
all its properties. From these, single out that conjunctive property that
includes as its conjuncts all the properties of the thing. Call that the rich
property of the thing. The thing itself, says Mann, is an instantiation of
the appropriate rich property. To generalize: For anything whatsoever,
there is an appropriate rich property. Therefore, everything is a property
instance of some rich property or other. Therefore, every person is a property instance It is certainly true that most property instances are not
persons, yet every person is a property instance.
It appears to me that Mann has here fallen into an ontological trap. Let
us once again have before us the distinction between an exemplication
of a property and an instance of a property. Whereas Socrates exemplied
the property, wisdom, Socrates wisdom instantiated it.
Now a person certainly exemplies its rich property. But what reason
is there to think that the person also instantiates that property that in
this case the instantiation is the exemplication? What reason is there
to think that Socrates instantiation of his rich property just is Socrates?
I see no reason at all to think this; nor does Mann oer any reason. I
surmise that Mann, at this crucial point in his argument, momentarily lost sight of the distinction between an exemplication of a property
and an instance of a property. Mann does not think that Socrates wisdom
is identical with Socrates, whereas he does think that the one and only

Divine Simplicity, .

Divine Simplicity, .

Inquiring about God

instance of Socrates rich property is identical with him. Presumably what

was going through Manns mind was the thought that Socrates wisdom
was not rich and complex enough to be Socrates. So he proposed taking a property instance that was as rich as necessary. But taking a more
complex property instance does nothing to collapse this trio of ontological relationships into a solo: Socrates exemplies his properties, his property instances instantiate those properties, and his property instances are
present in him.
The most decisive consideration against identifying Socrates with
Socrates instantiation of his rich property is this: if Socrates were identical with his instantiation of his rich property, then his exemplifying of
that property would of course be the same as his instantiating of it. But
notice that Socrates might have exemplied a dierent rich property from
that which he in fact exemplied; he only contingently exemplied the
rich property that he did exemplify. By contrast, an instance of a property
cannot instantiate dierent properties from those it does instantiate on
pain of losing its identity. Call Socrates rich property, SR. That entity
which is Socrates instantiation of SR cannot have existed and not have
been the instantiation of SR. Instances do not contingently instantiate
the properties that they do instantiate.
In response to a criticism of his theory lodged by Thomas Morris,
Mann, in a later article, has made some revisions and introduced some
additions. Morris criticism was this: if God is an instance of a property, then there is at least one property existing distinct from God as an
abstract object on which God is, in some sense, dependent for what he
is an instance of that property. But this violates the conviction that
God exists a se. Manns response, in the rst place, is to combine a property account of divine simplicity with a property-instance account by proposing that Gods property be taken as identical with Gods instance of
that property that omniscience be taken as identical with Gods omniscience, omnipotence as identical with Gods omnipotence, etc.
What strikes one about this proposal, as Mann presents it, is its ad hoc
character. One looks for a general discussion of properties and property
instances in which it is shown that certain properties are self-instantiating
(n.b., not self-exemplifying but self-instantiating), in which the general
conditions under which that is the case are laid out, and in which it is

Morris discussion is in On God and Mann, Religious Studies (): . Manns

response is in Simplicity and Properties, Religious Studies (): .
On God and Mann, .

Divine simplicity

shown that these conditions are satised in the case of omniscience,

omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and the rest of Gods properties. But
Mann oers no such general ontological discussion. Instead he concerns
himself entirely with a certain rather obvious objection to this theory.
The objection is this: if God is identical with the property instance,
Gods omniscience, and if that property instance is identical with the property, being omniscient, then it follows that God is a property. But to hold
that God is a property is to be confronted once again with Plantingas
objection: properties are abstract objects, incapable of having the personal
attributes that belong to God. This objection, which formerly Mann
regarded as decisive, he now tries to meet by questioning the assumption that properties are abstract objects. He suggests that the properties
of objects are the causal powers of the objects (though he also speaks of
a propertys presence in some entity as conferring a causal power on that
entity).
I myself fail to see, however, that this proposal secures Manns goal. I
presume that by the causal powers of objects, Mann means those capacities that objects have for causing one and another event. Water, for example, has the causal power of dissolving sugar. Mann himself speaks of
causal powers as that in virtue of which. But if this is indeed what causal
powers are, they seem to me clearly abstract entities. They are not concrete
causal agents but abstract powers of agents. On the other hand, it is possible that I dont at all understand what Mann has in mind by causal
powers. For he speaks of being triangular as the same causal power of
objects as being trilateral. I myself have considerable doubt as to whether
these properties are correctly thought of as causal powers; but if one does
so think of them, then it seems to me that they must be thought of as
distinct causal powers. It is in virtue of the triangularity of this object,
not its trilaterality, that I have these three bloody points in my hand. So
also, though I nd it dicult to think of omniscience as a causal power,
it appears to me that if it is a causal power, it is a dierent causal power
from omnibenevolence whereas of course Mann, because of the pressures of the simplicity doctrine, holds that they are the same. Perhaps,
then, I do not understand what Mann has in mind by causal powers. For
as I think of causal powers, the theory that properties are causal powers
does not have the consequence that properties are in general concrete.
Of course it would be open to Mann to argue that in the case of God,
the causal powers of the agent just are the causal agent. That is to say,
he could hold that though causal powers are in general abstract entities,
that is not true of all of them. At least one causal power just is a concrete

Inquiring about God

causal agent, that one being God. And perhaps this is Manns actual line
of thought. For though he uses words which suggest that he wishes to
question Plantingas assumption that properties, in general, are abstract
objects, he also says the following, which appears to go in the other direction that I have suggested: if properties are causal powers and if God is
a property, then he is a causal power. Moreover, if the property that God
is is variously identied as omniscience, omnipotence, moral perfection,
and the like, then the property cum causal power that God is looks more
and more analogous to the causal powers that ordinary persons have.
About this, I think we must simply say that the thought is too undeveloped for us to know whether Manns theory that properties are causal
powers meets Plantingas objection to the identication of God with any
property, or whether it merely presents the proposal to which Plantinga
made his objection under a new guise. I might add that Mann himself
stresses the inchoate character of his theory.
We have canvassed one of the recent attempts to oer a construal of
the theistic identity claims that will both make those claims ontologically intelligible and not yield consequences patently unacceptable to
theists. None of the attempts of which I am aware has made any signicant advance in this endeavor. One possible explanation for this situation is that we are just much less intelligent than our medieval forebears;
not only can we not devise an acceptable account of divine simplicity; we
cannot even understand accounts presented to us by the medievals that
they found non-problematic. I prefer another explanation. The theistic
identity claims were put forward by thinkers working within a very different ontological style from ours. They worked within a style of ontology that I shall call constituent ontology. We typically work within a style
that might be called relation ontology. We should expect that claims that
are baing within the one style will sometimes seem straightforward
within the other. The theistic identity claims are a paradigm example of
this.
I propose now to try to enter into that alternative way of thinking
far enough to explain how a medieval, thinking within the style of constituent ontology, would have understood those theistic identity claims.
One criterion of success in this endeavor will be that those claims cease
to be baing. Baement is to enter at the next point, where we try to
show that divine simplicity is compatible, say, with God having free
choice, and where we try to devise a theory of predication note, not a

Simplicity and Properties, .

Divine simplicity

theory of property-identity but a theory of predication which, without

compromising Gods simplicity, accounts for the multiplicity of distinct
predications that Jews, Christians, and Muslims want to make about
God.
Let us start with the rst of the theistic claims. But let us for the most
part not use the word essence in our reections, since for us it carries
too many misleading connotations. Let us instead use the term nature,
and speak of the nature of a thing.
The nature of an entity, a medieval would have said, is what-it-is-assuch. An entity does not have a certain nature in the way it has a certain
property. It is a certain nature. If an entity is something as such, then
it is a certain nature. One has to add at once that, for most things, that
isnt all they are. But with that qualication understood, everything is a
certain what-it-is-as-such. I am something as such. I am not only that,
indeed; but I am at least that. You too are something as such. So too are
all the plants and animals in the world. So too are the angels. And so
too is God. There is no mystery in how it can be that God is something
as such that God is a certain nature. Everything is something as such;
everything is a certain something-as-such, a certain what-it-is-as-such.
The only mystery about God if mystery it be is that we do not have
to add, but thats not all God is. For all other substances, we have to
make this addition.
It has become habitual for us twentieth-century philosophers, when
thinking of essences, to think of things as having essences, and to think
of these essences as certain properties or sets of properties. An essence
is thus for us an abstract entity. For a medieval, I suggest, an essence
or nature was just as concrete as that of which it is the nature. That is
because everything, including every concrete thing, is a something-assuch. A medieval would have found the suggestion that that is not the
case baing though, of course, plenty of later thinkers have made this
suggestion. Naturally the medieval will speak of something as having a
certain nature. But the having here is to be understood as having as one
of its constituents. Very much of the dierence between medieval and contemporary ontology hangs on these two dierent construals of having.
Whereas for the medievals, having an essence was having an essence as one
of its constituents, for us, having an essence is having an essence as one of
its properties: exemplifying it.
So far, then, no problem. But now we come across a perplexity that
generated enormous controversy among the medievals. Socrates appears to
have the same nature as Plato appears to have the same what-it-is-as-such,

Inquiring about God

viz., human nature. Yet obviously Socrates is not identical with Plato. How
are we to explain this?
Well, notice in the rst place that both Socrates and Plato are made out
of something; namely, out of a certain lump, or parcel, or bit, or quantity
of matter (we dont have the right word in English). And the bit of matter out of which Socrates is made is distinct from the bit of matter out
of which Plato is made. So let us think of Plato and Socrates as composites, articulated composites, with dierent constituents playing dierent
roles. That composite that is Socrates will include his nature, but will also
include his bit of matter. And what makes Socrates distinct from Plato is
that he is made out of a dierent bit of matter. Admittedly that is not the
only thing that makes him distinct; he also has dierent accidents. But
thats the basic thing.
Having said this, we had better look once again at that human nature
that we found, or thought we found, in both Socrates and Plato. Is the
situation really that there is a common human nature that enters into
dierent substantive-composites? Or do the dierent bits of matter that
enter into substantive-composites also, as it were, particularize the
natures? Does Socrates, contrary to initial appearances, have a distinct
nature from Plato similar but distinct? And if so, is it the matter out
of which Socrates is made that makes his nature distinct from all others? Suppose it is. And suppose, further that we make Socrates nature an
object of thought, focusing just on the nature and abstracting from the
bit of matter with which it is associated in that composite that is Socrates.
Is that which we are thinking of in such a case distinct from what we
would be thinking of if we thought about Platos nature along the same
lines, or is it identical with it?
All these questions, and many more in the same region, were posed
and discussed by the medievals. It would serve no purpose in this essay to
go into them farther. But notice that the diculties are posed by material
objects sharing, or being capable of sharing, or apparently being capable of sharing, their natures. In the case of immaterial entities, everyone
agreed: everything is its own nature.
I have already suggested that what enters into the sorts of composites that you and I are is more than a certain nature and a certain bit
of matter. We also possess various attributes that, though they are not
involved in what we are as such, nonetheless characterize us. Some of
these are essential to us; some, non-essential. We should not think of
these attributes themselves as constituents of those composites that we
are. But for each of these properties not belonging to a things nature,

Divine simplicity

be they essential or non-essential, there will be a property instance that

is present in that thing. Let us call these the accidents of the thing.
The composite that I am will include my accidents. To say it once
again: I am an articulated composite, with dierent sorts of constituents playing dierent roles in the composite, explaining dierent facts
about me.
And now for our question: Why should there not be a certain entity
which, like everything else, just is a certain nature, but which, unlike
most or all other entities, is nothing more than that is not a composite? Such an entity will not be made out of matter. Nor will it have any
accidents. It will be just a certain something-as-such, a certain what-itis-as-such. That would be an extraordinary entity. We would know next
to nothing about what it would be like to be such an entity. But there
seem to be no ontological diculties in the proposal that there is such
an entity. Of course there will be a variety of things that such an entity
is not, and there will be a variety of relations between that entity and
others. But there seems no reason to think that these facts imply that the
entity is, after all, a composite of constituents.
In the respondeo of the third article of question of Part I of his Summa
theologica, Aquinas gives a lucid exposition of the points I have been making. The respondeo in this case is a bit longer than most. Nonetheless it is
worth having before us in its entirety:
God is the same as His essence or nature. To understand this, it must be noted
that in things composed of matter and form, the nature or essence must differ from the suppositum, because the essence or nature connotes only what
is included in the denition of the species; as, humanity connotes all that is
included in the denition of man, for it is by this that man is man, and it is
this that humanity signies, that, namely, whereby man is man. Now individual
matter, with all the individualizing accidents, is not included in the denition
of the species. For this particular esh, these bones, this blackness or whiteness, etc., are not included in the denition of a man. Therefore this esh, these
bones, and the accidental qualities distinguishing this particular matter, are not
included in [humanity. Nevertheless they are included in] the thing which is
a man. Hence the thing which is a man has something more in it than has
humanity. Consequently humanity and a man are not wholly identical; but
humanity is taken to mean the formal part of a man, because the principles
whereby a thing is dened are regarded as the formal constituent in regard to
the individualizing matter. On the other hand, in things not composed of matter and form, in which individualization is not due to individual matter that
is to say, to this matter the very forms being individualized of themselves, it
is necessary the forms themselves should be subsisting supposita. Therefore suppositum and nature in them are identied. Since God is not composed of matter

Inquiring about God

and form, He must be His own Godhead, His own Life, and whatever else is
thus predicated of Him.

There are interesting connections between that part of the Thomistic perspective that I have been expounding, and some of the things Mann says.
It is Aquinas view that humanity, i.e., human nature, has as its instances
the various particularized human natures to be found in reality Socrates
nature, Platos nature, etc. Not human beings, but human natures, are
the instances of humanity each human being including in its composite a human nature but always more than that as well. But what, then,
about the property of being a human being ? What does this have as its
instances? The instances of this property will be human beings. But obviously human beings are also the entities that exemplify this property. In
the case of such individuating properties as this, then, exemplication
and instance coincide rather than for those properties that Mann calls
rich.
We are ready to look at the second of the three theistic identity claims.
The rst, that God is not distinct from Gods essence, has proved to be
non-problematic when considered within the medieval frame of thought;
perplexities arise instead for certain of those entities not identical with their
essences. But what about the claim that Gods existence is not distinct
from Gods essence. Isnt Gods existence an accident, or an accident-like
entity? If so, how can it possibly be identical with Gods nature?
Let us be sure that we have in hand the most felicitous way of putting
the question here. I think it is not helpful to say that Gods essence is
to exist as if what God is as such were just a lump or bit of existence.
I think it is only slightly better to say that Gods essence is identical
with Gods existence. The most felicitous way to put the claim, in my
judgment, is the way Aquinas puts it in the rst section of chapter of
Summa contra Gentiles: Gods essence or quiddity is not something other
than his being. In other words, Gods existence is not something distinct from Gods nature. We have seen that God is a something-as-such,

Jan Aertsen called my attention to the fact that there are some words in Thomas Latin text for
which the equivalents are missing in the Dominican translation that I have been using (New York:
Benziger Brothers, ). I have inserted them in brackets. With the passage quoted, compare
Summa contra Gentiles, Book One, Chapter , section : There must be some composition in
every being that is not its essence or quiddity. Since, indeed, each thing possesses its own essence,
if there were nothing in a thing outside its essence all that the thing is would be its essence, which
would mean that the thing is its essence. But, if some thing were not its essence, there should be
something in it outside its essence. Thus, there must be composition in it. Hence it is that the
essence in composite things is signied as a part, for example humanity in man. Now, it has been
shown that there is no composition in God. God is, therefore, His essence.

Divine simplicity

a certain what-it-is-as-such. The question before us now is whether Gods

existence is distinct from what God is as such.
If God existed contingently, then Gods existence would be distinct
from Gods essence it would not belong to what God is as such. But of
course Aquinas holds that God does not exist contingently. Elucidating
the point here is a bit tricky. For if we say that something belongs necessarily to some entity X just in case X has it in all possible worlds in
which X exists, then everything that exists has its existence necessarily.
But whatever diculties there may be in elucidation or articulation, let
us on this occasion agree that it is right to say that if an entity exists contingently, then its existence is distinct from what it is as such. Aquinas
himself tries to articulate the point in terms of causation, or accounting
for. If a thing exists contingently, then one cannot account for its existence just by referring to its essence; whereas, for example, to account for
why a horse is an animal, one just points to its nature.
So what about entities that exist necessarily? Is their existence
distinct from or identical with their essence? Perhaps for some it is
distinct. For it may be that for certain necessarily existing entities,
there is something external to them that accounts for why they exist.
Aquinas was of the conviction that God accounts for the existence
not only of contingently existing entities but of all necessarily existing
entities distinct from God. To account for why they exist, we have to
appeal to God whereas appealing to them does nothing whatever
to account for why God exists. Articulating the concept of account/
explanation/cause that is operative here is a challenging intellectual
task. But suppose it can be done. Then it seems right to say that
whether or not some entity X exists necessarily, if to account for its
existence one has to refer to something other than its own nature, its
existence is distinct from its nature does not belong to what it is as
such. Aquinas says that that thing, whose existence diers from its
essence, must have its existence caused by another. And clearly he
intends to a rm the converse as well. It was the uniform conviction
of the medievals that there is nothing other than Gods nature that
accounts for why God exists. Hence Gods existence is not distinct
from Gods essence as also, for example, Bucephalus equinity is not
distinct from Bucephalus essence.

See Chris Menzel, Theism, Platonism, and the Metaphysics of Mathematics, Faith and
Philosophy (): .
Summa Theologiae , , resp.

Inquiring about God

Aquinas was of the view that, for every non-divine nature, what belongs
to the nature is not existence but potentiality for existing. What belongs
to what I am as such is not existence but being capable of existing. My
existence is the realization, the actualization, of this potential. Thus for
non-divine entities, their essence and their existence stand in a potentiality/actualization relation to each other. Existence must be compared to
essence, if the latter is a distinct reality, says Aquinas, as actuality to
potentiality (ibid.). What makes God dierent from everything else is
that it is not potentiality for existing that belongs to what God is as such,
but existing. There seems, then, to be nothing ontologically problematic in
the second of the theistic identity claims, the claim that Gods existence
is not distinct from Gods essence, when that claim is considered within
the framework of the constituent ontology characteristic of the medievals.
The principal problem in this area will be to explain how, for an entity
that exists necessarily, there can yet be something that accounts for its
existence.
The last of the theistic identity claims that we are considering is that
God has no properties distinct from Gods essence. Perhaps the best way
to begin reecting on this is to consider some necessary entity other than
God some number, say. So consider the number . The number stands
to me in the relation of just having been mentioned by me; we would
conclude, in contemporary ontology, that it has the relational property
of having been mentioned by me. We all feel, however, that this property
is extrinsic to the number , in contrast, say, to the property of being
odd, which is intrinsic to it. Though I think we all have some grasp of
this extrinsic/intrinsic distinction, no one, to the best of my knowledge,
has yet succeeded in articulating it. Its not the same as the contingent/
necessary distinction. For instance, take the two properties of having
believed that God is simple, and having been mentioned by me. Aquinas
possesses both of these properties. Clearly the former is intrinsic to him,
the latter, extrinsic. Yet both are contingent properties of him.
Now it seems plausible to think that all the intrinsic properties of the
number are essential to it. It even seems plausible to think that they all
belong to what the number is as such, i.e., to the nature of . So I think
there is also nothing especially problematic in the third identity claim,
that none of Gods properties is distinct from Gods nature. Admittedly
Aquinas would not have made the point in the way I just made it, in
terms.of a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties of a thing.
He would have denied that what I have called extrinsic properties are truly
properties. Whatever I do when I assertively utter of something, was

Divine simplicity

referred to by me, Aquinas would not have described that as predicating a property of it. If he had conceded that they are extrinsic properties,
he would have faced the question: In what are their property instances
present? He would have been extremely reluctant to view those as constituents of that entity that purportedly possesses the extrinsic properties.
(Furthermore, he would probably have thought it misleading to speak of
anything other than the nature of the thing as intrinsic to it.)
The task I set myself in this essay has been completed. I wanted to
show that the three theistic identity claims, which to many of us who do
ontology in the twentieth century seem so baing, are, when approached
within the ontological framework of the medievals, not at all baing.
The root of the dierence, I have suggested, is that whereas the medievals worked within the style of constituent ontology, we typically work
within the style of relation ontology and as part of this dierence we work
with a dierent view of essence. Of course not every constituent ontology
will render the theistic identity claims non-problematic. The great exception to my generalization about the style of twentieth-century ontology
is Gustav Bergmann. Bergmann worked relentlessly in the style of constituent ontology. His way of developing constituent ontology was such,
however, that he would probably nd the theistic identity claims as bafing as do the rest of us. So my point has not been that working in the
style of constituent ontology automatically makes the theistic identity
claims non-problematic, but rather that working in the style of relation
ontology automatically makes them problematic.
According to the dominant style of twentieth-century ontology, the
essence of an entity is something to which it bears a certain relation the
relation of necessarily exemplifying it. Likewise a contingent property of an
entity is something to which it bears a relation, the relation of contingently
exemplifying it. And if we acknowledge property instances, these too are in
relation: the property instances of those properties that some entity exemplies are present in that entity. The pattern is clear: twentieth-century
ontology is relentlessly relational in its style. We dont think of entities as
being composites of constituents but as standing in multiple relationships
with other entities. And naturally God stands in relationships too. A medieval looking at our ontology would nd acknowledgment of essence just
missing. We talk about the properties of things; and some of those properties we call the essence of the thing. But nowhere do we give ontological
acknowledgment to what an entity is as such. What we call the essence of

See my Bergmanns Constituent Ontology, No s (): .

Inquiring about God

an entity would by a medieval be regarded as something whose instance is

a non-contingent accident of the entity.
It may be added that a characteristic feature of our contemporary way
of practicing relation ontology that also plays a role in the discussions
over simplicity is a clear-eyed denial of the Platonic thesis that properties
are ideal examples of themselves that justice is ideally just entity, etc.
We hold that, in general, properties are not self-exemplifying. Essential
in Plantingas argument is the assumption that knowledge does not know,
that love does not love, that potency does not do anything, etc.
Shortly after noticing the dierence of ontological style between
us and the medievals, however, the thought comes to mind that the
twentieth-century ontologist actually has no diculty at all with the doctrine of divine simplicity. True, he nds the three theistic identity claims
to be baing, if not incoherent. But these three claims emerged from the
attempt of the medieval philosophers to articulate the doctrine of divine
simplicity. They are not to be identied with the doctrine itself. The relation ontologist doesnt think of things as composites. In a way, then, he
thinks of everything as simple. If one goes about the ontological enterprise trying to discern the constituents that each sort of thing must be
acknowledged as having, then the claim that there is something with no
constituents comes as an extraordinary limiting case to ones whole style
of thinking. One can see why a theologian who is a constituent ontologist would feel compelled to lead o with this claim in his reections on
the nature of God. But if ones fundamental ontological model is that of
entities standing in relation rather than of entities composed of constituents well then, as it were, everything is simple, nothing is a composite.
The doctrine of divine simplicity ts even more smoothly into the contemporary style of ontology than into the medieval. In the medieval style,
simplicity is a limiting case albeit, an intelligible one. In the contemporary style, simplicity is the general case.
Unfortunately, victory in the debate is not to be won so easily. For
though the medievals deduced a great many of Gods attributes from
Gods simplicity, they deduced that in turn from something else even
more fundamental; namely, from Gods self-suciency and sovereignty.
As I read the history of medieval philosophy and theology, the medievals
were ineluctably gripped by the Plotinian vision of reality as requiring
something that is the unconditioned condition of everything not identical with itself; this they identied with God. Says Plotinus: If there were
nothing outside all alliance and compromise, nothing authentically one,
there would be no Source. Untouched by multiplicity, it will be wholly

Divine simplicity

self-sucing, an absolute First, whereas any not-rst demands its earlier,

and any non-simplex needs the simplicities within itself as the very foundations of its composite existence. Anyone who is gripped by these convictions and arguments would see our twentieth-century claim, that God
has an essence i.e., that God stands in the relation of exemplication
to an essence as an obvious violation of Gods self-suciency. Thus in
my judgment Plantinga is absolutely right in concluding that the fundamental issue facing us in our reections us, who think in the style of
relation ontology is whether God has a nature. And he is quite right in
suggesting that in reecting on this we will nd ourselves dealing with a
fundamental conict of intuitions.
I hope to have shown, however, that that was not the fundamental perplexity facing the medievals. For them, as I have already suggested, the
fundamental perplexities were twofold. The doctrine that God has no
properties distinct from Gods essence seems, on the face of it, incompatible with some of the things that Christians hold about God, e.g., that
God has free choice. And, secondly, the medievals found it dicult to
devise a theory of predication that would adequately account for the multiplicity of distinct things that we nd ourselves required to arm of this
simple being that is God. We say of God that God is wise, and that God
is good, and that God is powerful. In speaking thus, we are not simply
repeating ourselves. The general strategy of the medievals was clear: to
interpret these dierent predications as expressing dierent cognitive
xes on God. What they could not say, however, was that the dierence between these dierent cognitive xes on God is grounded in some
dierence within Gods essence or Gods accidents; for that, of course,
would introduce composition. But neither were they willing to give up
the conviction that these predicates do indeed express some sort of cognitive x on God. Their recourse was to say that our predications concerning God express either determinate negations concerning God, or refer to
some relation of God to entities other than God. But working this out in
detail proved dicult, and proposed solutions to the diculties, almost
always controversial.
Plotinus and Kant, wrestling with the same issues, gave up on the
attempt to oer a cognitive construal of predications concerning God.
We are, they said, to select and choose among ways of thinking and
speaking of God by reference to some non-cognitive purpose. For Kant,

Fifth Ennead IV, . I use the version of the Enneads translated by Stephen MacKenna (Burdett,
NY: Larson Publications, ).

Inquiring about God

the relevant purpose was the moral life: it is conducive to the moral life
to think of the transcendent as if it were a God related to us as a father.
For Plotinus, the relevant purpose was the mystical vision: to think of
the One as existing, as one, etc., is more conducive to the mystical vision
than to think of it as not thus:
when we speak of this First as Cause, we are arming something happening not
to it but to us, the fact that we take from this Self-enclosed: strictly we should
put neither a This nor a That to it; we hover, as it were, about it, seeking the
statement of an experience of our own, sometimes nearing this Reality, sometimes baed by the enigma in which it dwells
Our way then takes us beyond knowing; there may be no wandering from
unity; knowing and knowable must all be set aside; every object of thought,
even the highest, we must pass by, for all that is good is later than This and
derives from This as from the sun all the light of the day.
Not to be told; not to be written: in our writing and telling we are but urging towards it: out of discussion we call to vision: to those desiring to see, we
point the path; our teaching is of the road and the travelling; the seeing must be
the very act of one that has made this choice.

None of the medieval school theologians was willing to follow this noncognitive strategy; only some of the mystics were willing to do so. Hence
the perplexities.
It would require another paper to canvas and appraise the strategies
that the medievals adopted in their struggle to explain how it can be that
we can make a multiplicity of distinct true predications concerning the
simple God. But I suggest that if we grant them their ontological style,
the constituent style, then the place to engage them is not on the theistic
identity claims as such. Those prove to be non-problematic. The place
to engage them, in the rst place, is on the tenability in general of constituent ontology. The place to engage them, in the second place, is on
the general question of whether it is possible, while holding that God is
simple, to develop a theory of predication that adequately accounts for
the multiplicity of distinct things Christians wish to say about God. And
the place to engage them, thirdly, is in their attempt to show that the
doctrine of simplicity does not contradict other fundamental doctrines.
As part of this third engagement, we shall want to look closely at their
attempt to nd something in the simple God and its relationships to
other things that can be called knowledge, something else to be called
love, something else to be called creating, something else to be called

Sixth Ennead IX, .

Divine simplicity

revealing, something else to be called redeeming, etc. We shall want to

ask whether what they identify as knowledge, love, creation, revelation,
redemption, etc., in the simple self-sucient God, can be viewed as what
the theist is speaking of when she says that God knows and loves what
God has created, that God reveals to human beings Gods will, and that
God is working for the redemption of the cosmos. I have my doubts. But
that, too, is another tale.

I discuss some of the issues in Suering love, chapter in the present volume.

Alston on Aquinas on theological predication

In the s, William Alston published a number of important papers in

which he argued that it is possible to arm something true of God by
speaking literally.
The topic was not one that just happened to pique his curiosity. What
drew his attention to the topic, and made it important, was the fact that,
as he put it in the earliest of the articles, the impossibility of literal talk
about God has become almost an article of faith for theology in this
century.
I share Alstons reason for regarding the issue as important. But I have
a more specic interest as well. In my Divine Discourse I claimed that it
is philosophically tenable to hold that it is literally true of God that God
speaks commands, asserts, asks, promises, and the like. What I had in
mind by speaking was the performance of illocutionary acts. Though
I myself see nothing impossible in Gods performing locutionary acts,
nonetheless the traditional claim or assumption that God cannot literally
speak very much depended on not having available J. L. Austins distinction between locutionary and illocutionary acts; the traditional argument,
that since God has no body, God cannot literally speak, does not work if
it is illocutionary acts that one has in mind. What I did not do is mount
a more general argument to the eect that one can predicate of God what
is true of God by speaking literally. Thus I have a vested interest in the
cogency of Alstons argumentation.
Alston did not content himself with easy victory in these articles. He
did not content himself with observing that even the most hardened

I have in mind Irreducible Metaphors in Theology, Can We Speak Literally of God?, and
Functionalism and Theological Language. These can now be found in the collection of Alstons
articles, Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, ). An important paper on a closely related topic, Referring to God, is also
to be found in this collection.
Quoted from William P. Alston, Irreducible Metaphors in Theology, in Divine Nature, .
Nicholas Wolterstor, Divine Discourse (Cambridge University Press, ).

Alston on Aquinas on theological predication

opponents of literal speech about God must concede that one can arm
something true of God by the literal use of such negative or disjunctive
predicates as is not a toucan or is either a toucan or not a toucan. Nor
did he content himself with observing that what have come to be called
Cambridge predicates must be true of God for example, is said by
many theologians to be insusceptible of having predicates true of him
when they are used literally. It was what he called intrinsic predicates
that Alston had his eye on predicates that, as he put it, tell us something about the nature or operations of the subject.
Apart from observing that some of those who insist, in their theory,
that such speech is impossible, nonetheless take its possibility for granted
in their practice, Alstons argument in these articles came in two parts.
He oered an account of metaphor, according to which a condition of
saying something true about some entity by way of speaking metaphorically about it is that it be possible to say something true about that
entity by speaking literally about it; and he argued that there is good
reason to think there is sucient similarity between Gods actions and
states of self, and our actions and states of self, for certain predicates to
be literally true of both. I judge both parts of Alstons argument to be
conclusive.
In spite of the cogency of his argumentation, however, Alstons articles
appear to have had little inuence on those whom he was addressing,
namely, the theological community. Why is that? Well, for one thing,
most theologians dont pay much attention to what contemporary analytic philosophers are saying, even if the latter are speaking directly to
theological issues and to claims made by theologians. But I think there
is another reason as well. Alston addresses the conclusion of the theologians, namely, that literal speech about God is impossible, but not the
lines of thought that led them to this conclusion. He explicitly announces
that he will not be doing the latter. It seems evident to me that, in general, human beings who nd themselves in situations of this sort will
often stick with what they have believed all along believed for what

At one point, Alston makes the argument more dicult for himself than it need be by a rming
the thesis that all human basic actions consist in moving some part of ones body (Divine Nature,
.). Th is seems to me not correct. For example, this morning I have been thinking about
Alstons case for literal speech about God because I decided to do so. My thinking about the topic
is a basic action; I did not perform it by performing some other action. And my thinking about
Alstons case does not consist of moving some part of my body.
In Can We Speak Literally of God? he says, In my opinion, all these arguments are radically
insucient to support the sweeping denial that any intrinsic predicate can be literally true of
God. But this is not the place to go into that (Divine Nature, , his emphasis).

Inquiring about God

were supposedly good reasons and either ignore arguments against their
view or live with cognitive dissonance.
In the course of his articles, Alston identies three major lines of
thought that have led theologians to the conclusion he is contesting. Some
regard the conclusion as an implication of their view that God is not a
being but the ground of all beings; some regard it as an implication of
their view that God is an ontologically simple being; and some regard it
as an implication of their view that God is transcendent, wholly other. I
myself regard this latter claim as coming in two forms; or more precisely,
I regard the language of transcendence and otherness as regularly used to
express two quite dierent claims. Some theologians regard Scripture as
teaching that God is transcendent, and hold that it is an implication of
this Scriptural teaching that none of our predicates is true of God when
used literally; others hold the philosophical thesis that God, being outside
of time, transcends the bounds of literal use of concepts. Behind the rst,
the second, and the fourth of these lines of thought there is a philosophical gure who is generally regarded as having given to that line of thought
its classic formulation Plotinus, Aquinas, or Kant, respectively.
One way to supplement Alstons argumentation, thus making it more
likely that his goal will be achieved of disabusing theologians of the view
that nothing true can be said of God when using intrinsic predicates literally, would be to contest the claims that God lacks individuality, that
God is simple, and that God is outside of time. Another way to go would
be to concede these claims for the purpose of the argument and then
go on to argue that it does not follow that nothing true can be said of
God when speaking literally. No doubt it would be especially eective in
persuading theologians of this last point if one could show that not even
their great patron philosophers Plotinus, Aquinas, and Kant held that
nothing true can be said of God when using intrinsic predicates literally.
This seems to me in fact to be the case. Plotinus, though he certainly
denied that The Supreme, as he sometimes called it, is an entity, nonetheless did not hold that nothing true can be said of it when using intrinsic predicates literally. He did hold this thesis, so far as I can tell, for
one-term predicates; but most denitely he did not hold it for multi-term
predicates. For example, he held it to be true of The Supreme that it was
the ultimate ground of everything other than itself, ultimately accounting for the existence and character of all else. So too Aquinas explicitly
says that when one predicates of God the intrinsic predicates good and
powerful and speaks literally, one arms of God what is true of God.
And Kant held that when one abstracts from our ordinary concept of

Alston on Aquinas on theological predication

causation its temporal component, retaining just the idea of a ground,

then one has a concept that is literally true of God. In short, it turns
out that our contemporary theologians, in denying the possibility of literally true intrinsic predications concerning God, are departing from
the thought of their great patron gures from the philosophical tradition. And more generally: there are very few important gures from the
philosophical and theological traditions whom they can summon in support of their position pseudo-Dionysius perhaps, though even that is
debatable.
In what follows I propose to elaborate and defend the claim I have
just made concerning Aquinas. Full support, of the sort I have just indicated, of Alstons program would require a defense of my claim concerning each of the three classic gures; but thats impossible in a single
essay. My reason for settling on Aquinas is that, in , Alston published a full article in which he oers his interpretation of Aquinas on
predications concerning God: Aquinas on Theological Predication: A
Look Backward and a Look Forward (ATP). I will be engaging that
article.
Before I turn to what Alston says in this article, let me quote a passage
from an earlier article in which he helpfully distinguishes various ways
in which creaturely terms can be used in speaking of God. He distinguishes six such ways:
. Straight univocity. Ordinary terms are used in the same ordinary
senses of God and human beings.
. Modied univocity. Meanings can be dened or otherwise established
such that terms can be used with those meanings of both God and
human beings.
. Special literal meanings. Terms can be given, or otherwise take on,
special technical senses in which they apply to God.
. Analogy. Terms for creatures can be given analogical extensions so as
to be applicable to God.
. Metaphor. Terms that apply literally to creatures can be metaphorically applied to God.
. Symbol. Ditto for symbol, in one or another meaning of that
term.

In Eleonore Stump, ed., Reasoned Faith: Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, ), . References to this article are given parenthetically in the text.
Functionalism and Theological Language, in Divine Nature, .

Inquiring about God

Immediately after presenting this six-fold typology, Alston says that the
most radical partisans of otherness, from Dionysius through Aquinas to
Tillich, plump for something in the () to () range and explicitly reject
(). The possibility of () has been almost wholly ignored, and () has not
fared much better. Alston agrees that it is Aquinas view that we can
speak truly of God using terms in their literal sense; his argument is that
Aquinas sees himself as having to pay the price, for that position, of denying straight univocity. My argument will be that Aquinas arms both
straight univocity and the possibility of saying of God what is literally
true of him while also arming analogy.

Let us get Alstons interpretation before us. A great many commentators
give the impression of doing their best to put out of mind Aquinas answer
to his question in Article of Question , Part I of Summa Theologiae.
Alston does not. The question is whether any term (nomen) can be said
(dicatur) literally ( proprie) of God? Employing the distinction between
saying a term literally of some thing and saying it metaphorically of it,
Aquinas answers that not all terms are said metaphorically of God; but
some are said literally (sed contra). These are those terms that signify the
perfections that ow from [God] and are to be found in creatures, yet
which exist in [God] in an eminent way (resp.). Aquinas cites being,
good, and living as examples; these terms, he says, can be said literally of God (ad ).
There is no reason in the text to suppose that Aquinas is not using
literal ( proprie) strictly and in its literal sense. And given that it is metaphorice that he contrasts with proprie, our term literal is surely the correct translation. In short, it was clearly Aquinas view that, when using
the terms literally, we can arm of God what is true of God by predicating of God such perfection terms as exists, good, and living. Here is
Alstons summary of Aquinas thought on the matter:
In article [Aquinas] argues that some terms can be used literally [ proprie] of
God, namely, those that do not include in their meaning the imperfect mode in
which a perfection is realized in creatures, for example, such terms as being,
good, and living. Lets call these pure perfection terms. By contrast, those

Neither the Dominican nor the Blackfriars translation of the Summa Theologiae is entirely satisfactory for my purposes, since both misinterpret Aquinas on the very points that I will be discussing. In general, however, I will be following the Dominican translation, on the ground that it is
more literal, revising it when I deem that necessary.

Alston on Aquinas on theological predication

terms that do include a creaturely mode in their meaning, for example, rock
and lion, can be said of God only metaphorically. (ATP, )

In the same respondeo (ST I, , ) Aquinas claries his claim by means

of the distinction between that which is signied by a term, its res signicata, and the terms mode of signication, its modus signicandi. It is
only so far as that which is signied is concerned that some terms are
applied literally ( proprie) to God. Indeed, such terms are applied more
properly [to God] than to creatures, and are said primarily ( per prius) of
God. With respect to mode of signication, however, there are no terms
that can be literally ( proprie) said of God; for they [all] have a mode of
signication that is relevant to creatures (resp.).
Aquinas assumes familiarity with the distinction between res signicata and modus signicandi; he does not explain it. Whats meant by
the res signicata of a predicate term is clear enough or given that
many predicate terms have a number of distinct meanings, whats clear
enough is what is meant by the res signicata of a predicate term with
a certain meaning. Its the property signied by the term with that
meaning that is, the property that one would attribute to something
if, speaking literally, one predicated of it the predicate with that meaning. When it is pure perfection terms that we are using, the res signicata is the perfection designated (signied): goodness, life, existence,
and so forth.
What Aquinas has in mind by the modus signicandi of a term is less
clear though still clear enough for our purposes here. We get the essential information in his remark that our intellect apprehends these perfections in the mode that they are present in creatures, and thus they are
signied by our terms. Take any case of apprehending some predicable
entity, any case of having it in mind. Aquinas distinguishes between, on
the one hand, the entity apprehended, and, on the other hand, ones way
of apprehending it. Ones way of apprehending it is determined by the
mode in which that predicable is present in creatures by which Aquinas
surely means creatures with which one is familiar. Thus when I am thinking of power, one can distinguish between that which I am apprehending,
namely, power, and my way of apprehending it, this latter being shaped
by the powerful things the things possessing power with which I am
familiar from my experience. Of course, not only do I apprehend the
abstract predicable, power; you do so as well, along with almost all other
human beings out of infancy. Hence we can speak not just of my way of
apprehending power and your way of apprehending power; we can speak
of our way.

Inquiring about God

Aquinas thought is that the distinction between the object of our

apprehension of some predicable and our way of apprehending it is carried over into, or preserved within, the corresponding predicate term.
A predicate term will not only signify a certain predicable; it will also
express express is probably the best word here our way of apprehending that predicable, this latter, to say it once again, being shaped by
the instantiations of that predicable familiar to us from our experience.
And whatever else may be true of such experiences of ours, this will be
true: they will have been experiences of creatures.
The highly schematic character of Aquinas remark about the modus signicandi of a term leaves room for the idea to be eshed out in a number
of dierent ways. Let me quote a passage from one of those earlier articles
of Alston in which he draws a distinction that he describes as reminiscent of Aquinas distinction between the property signied by a term
and the mode of signifying. The general point, he says:
[I]s that the common possession of abstract features is compatible with as great
a dierence as you like in the way in which these features are realized. A meeting and a train of thought can both be orderly even though what it is for the
one to be orderly is enormously dierent from what it is for the other to be
orderly This general point suggests the possibility that the radical otherness
of God might manifest itself in the way in which common abstract features are
realized in the divine being, rather than in the absence of common features.
What it is for God to make something is radically dierent from what it is for a
human being to make something; but that does not rule out an abstract feature
in common, e.g., that by the exercise of agency something comes into existence
Many theistic thinkers have moved too quickly from radical otherness to the
impossibility of any univocity, neglecting this possibility that the otherness may
come from the way in which common features are realized.

In the essay we are engaging, Aquinas on Theological Predication,

Alston suggests a somewhat dierent way of articulating Aquinas
thought (ATP, ) on modus signicandi. For our purposes here,
however, there is no point in selecting any one way. What is important
is just Aquinas contention that aspects of the mode in which some perfection is manifested in our creaturely experience become ingredients
in our way of apprehending that perfection, and thereby also ingredients

From Functionalism and Theological Language, in Divine Nature, (his emphasis). Alston
adds, in a footnote, that neither Thomas nor the Thomistic tradition has seized this opportunity
to locate an area of univocal predication. What I will be arguing is that Aquinas does what
Alston here says he does not do; viz., he uses the distinction between the property signied by a
term and the mode of signifying to locate an area of univocal predication.

Alston on Aquinas on theological predication

in the mode of signication of a term that signies that perfection. Thus

it is that he says, when distinguishing between terms that can be said
literally of God and those that can only be said metaphorically: Those
terms that are said literally of God do not include bodily conditions in
that which is signied but only in their mode of signication, whereas
those that are said (dicuntur) metaphorically of God include bodily conditions in the very thing signied (ST I, , , ad ). Speaking more
elaborately, he says this:
There are some names which signify these perfections owing from God to
creatures in such a way that the imperfect way in which creatures receive the
divine perfection is part of the very signication of the name itself, as stone signies a material being; and names of this kind can be applied to (attribui) God
only in a metaphorical sense. Other names, however, signify these perfections
absolutely, without any such mode of participation being part of their signication, as the words being, good, living, and the like and such names can be literally
said of (dicuntur) God. (ST I, , , ad )

Using Aquinas conceptuality, I can now formulate my own thesis about

the attribution of speech to God as follows: though the predicate performs illocutionary acts includes corporeal conditions in its mode of signication, it does not include corporeal conditions in the action signied.
To say of God that God speaks (i.e., performs illocutionary acts) is thus
quite unlike saying of God that God is a rock and also quite unlike saying of a forest that it speaks.
Two articles later, in this same question on The Names of God,
Aquinas poses the question whether terms are said univocally or equivocally of God and creatures (ST I, , ). It is of critical importance to
see that this question has not already been answered in what Aquinas
has said about the literality of speech about God. When considering
whether a term has been used literally or metaphorically, one takes a single instance of its use and poses the question concerning that instance. By
contrast, one cannot take a single instance of the use of a term and ask
whether the term, in that instance, is being used univocally or equivocally. That makes no sense. It is only with reference to two or more uses of
a term that one can raise the issue of univocity or equivocation. The issue
is whether the term, in these two or more uses, is being used to designate

Also see Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles I, , : And so with reference to the mode of signication no name is ttingly applied to God; this is done only with reference to that which the name
has been imposed to signify. Such names, therefore, as Dionysius teaches, can be both armed
and denied of God. They can be armed because of the meaning of the name; they can be
denied because of the mode of signication.

Inquiring about God

the same property or dierent properties. If the same, then it is being

used univocally; if not, then it is being used equivocally.
So consider two instances of the use of a single term. One might be
using it literally in each instance while nonetheless using it equivocally as
between the two; that would be the case if the term had two established
senses, and in one instance one was using it literally in one of those senses
and in the other instance one was using it literally in the other of those
two established senses. Or suppose one is using it metaphorically in the
two instances; one might nonetheless be using it to say the same thing, in
which case one would be using it univocally; alternatively, one might be
using it to say dierent things, in which case one would be using it equivocally as between the two instances. Or yet again, one might be using the
term literally in one instance and metaphorically in the other, in which
case, as between the two, one would be using it equivocally. And so forth.
Alston sees all of this clearly in his discussion.
So back to Aquinas question, whether terms are said univocally or
equivocally of God and creatures: Aquinas answer is that it is impossible
to predicate ( praedicare) anything univocally of God and creatures. The
predication will always be equivocal. And this is always Aquinas answer
to this question. As Alston says, Aquinas always takes the rst order of
business [when dealing with this issue] to be to show that terms are not,
and cannot be, used univocally of God and creatures (ATP, ).
Alston goes on to make a point that will be of critical importance
for my subsequent discussion. All Aquinass reasons for this, at least all
those that make explicit the dierences between God and creatures that
prevent univocity, stem from one basic divine attribute simplicity
(ATP, ). Th is is correct; Aquinas never fails to make clear, when discussing this issue, that the doctrine of divine simplicity is what forces
him to deny univocity. Alston remarks that twentieth-century philosophers, in arguing against univocity, are more likely to cite divine
immateriality or atemporality, and theologians are more likely to make
unspecic appeals to otherness or to Gods not counting as a being.
For Aquinas, on the other hand, it is simplicity that makes all the difference (ATP, ).
Here is one passage in which Aquinas makes the point, from the sed
contra of I, , of Summa Theologiae: That which is predicated ( praedicatur) of several things according to the same term, but not according
to the same ratio, is predicated of them equivocally. But no term applies
(convenit) to God with that ratio according to which it is said (dicitur)
of a creature. Using is wise as an example, Aquinas then oers his

Alston on Aquinas on theological predication

reason for this claim: For wisdom in creatures is a quality, though not
in God.
Everyone reading this essay will know that Aquinas did not content
himself with saying that when we predicate the same term of God and
of creatures, and we speak truly in both cases, our terms are always said
equivocally of God and creatures. The equivocation is not mere equivocation. Though dierent things are being said, theres a relation between
the things said, making the predications analogous. Equivocal, yes; but
the equivocation of analogy.
Cajetan, in The Analogy of Names (), distinguished three types of
analogy inequality, attribution, and proportionality and argued that
Aquinas, in his teaching concerning predications of God, had in mind
the analogy of proportionality (i.e., of relationality). Cajetans interpretation became canonical among followers of Aquinas, especially among
neo-Thomists of the twentieth century. Alston argues that there is no
indication whatsoever in the Thomistic texts that Aquinas had the analogy of proportionality in mind; everything indicates that he was thinking in terms of the analogy of attribution. Alstons argument seems to
me decisive. For my purposes here, however, it makes no dierence one
way or the other. What is important is just Aquinas consistent teaching
that, given Gods ontological simplicity and our ontological complexity, terms are never said univocally of God and creatures but at best
analogically.


Alston perceives with greater clarity than any other interpreter I know of
that Aquinas now appears to have a serious problem on his hands. Pure
perfection terms are literally true of God. The res signicata of those pure
perfection terms is just those perfections themselves, not any particular
mode of participation in the perfection. Hence such terms can be applied
literally to God, even though our creaturely mode of participation in
those perfections is dierent from Gods mode of participation. Yet as
between God and creatures, these perfection terms, like all others, are
predicated at best analogically, never univocally.
But if in the two instances, predication of creatures and predication
of God, the same perfection is designated by the predicate term, and if
both God and we have that perfection (albeit in a dierent mode), and if
the term applies literally to God, how could the term not apply literally

Inquiring about God

to us as well as to God? But if it does, then the predication is univocal as

between us and God. Let me quote Alston:
It appears that the doctrine of an analogical meaning of theological terms has
been frozen out; there is no place for it. Instead of analogically related creaturely
and divine senses [of the terms we predicate], what we have are creaturely senses
all up and down the line, together with the recognition that one aspect of each
such sense [i.e., its modus signicandi] is ineluctably inappropriate for application
to the divine On Aquinass own showing there is no room for an analogy of
meaning for creaturely and divine applications of terms. (ATP, )

Alston remarks that at one point in [his] decades-long reection on
this topic, [he] thought that this was the last word (ATP, ). He now
thinks he has a solution to the problem. His solution is to back away from
interpreting Aquinas as holding that God and we participate in the same
perfection; the dierence in our modes of participation makes for a difference in the perfections (forms). In Alstons words, both dierence of
form and dierence of mode of being of the form are derived from the
same basic divinecreature dierence: the simplicity of God. There can
be no exact reproduction of form just because creatures have in a divided
way what is found in God in an absolutely simple way, without any real
distinction between the perfections (ATP, ). Hence in predicating a
pure perfection term of God and of creatures, we are not predicating the
same res signicata after all.
Alston cites two passages in favor of this interpretation, one from
Summa Theologiae and one from Summa contra Gentiles. Let me say
something about the latter passage a bit later, and consider the former
here. Here is the passage, in the rather more literal translation of the
Dominicans than in the Blackfriars translation that Alston uses:
God prepossesses in Himself all the perfections of creatures, being Himself simply and universally perfect. Hence every creature represents Him, and is like
Him so far as it possesses some perfection; yet it represents Him not as something of the same species or genus, but as the excelling principle of whose form
the eects fall short, although they derive some kind of likeness thereto. (ST I,
, , resp.)

Though the passage is compatible with Alstons interpretation, it strikes

me as not supporting it. Read all by itself, it can be interpreted as saying
that the perfections of creatures are not identical with the perfections

Alston on Aquinas on theological predication

of God but only similar to them; they fall short of Gods perfections.
But let us not forget that over and over in these articles of Question ,
Aquinas cites as the relevant dierence between us and God that God
participates in perfections as a simple being whereas we participate in perfections as complex beings. So when Aquinas speaks of the eects [falling] short, what eect does he have in mind the perfection itself that is
to be found in us, or our mode of participation in the shared perfection?
The passage all by itself seems to me ambiguous on the matter (in Latin,
that is). But if so, it cannot be used as evidence for Alstons point.
Apart from the fact that neither this passage nor, as we shall see shortly,
the other that Alston cites, supports his interpretation, there are a number
of textual and systematic reasons for not embracing his solution. Recall
that in the very next article after the one from which Alston has just
quoted, Aquinas, employing his distinction between the res signicata of
terms and their modus signicandi, says that, as regards the former, perfection terms apply literally ( proprie) to God. So if Alstons present view were
correct, then, given that predication is analogous as between God and us,
and given Aquinas clear statement that perfection terms are literally true
of God, it would follow that perfection terms are only metaphorically
true of us. I think there are at least three good reasons for not interpreting
Aquinas as holding this.
First, Aquinas nowhere says that perfection terms apply only metaphorically to us, not literally. Admittedly it is also true, so far as I know, that
he nowhere says that they do apply to us literally. But if you and I were
writing, we wouldnt bother to make a point of that; it would seem too
obvious. Only if we held that no such terms apply to us literally would we
even raise the issue of whether they apply to us literally or metaphorically.
So, too, for Aquinas. The only question in the region he thinks worth
discussing is whether any terms apply to God literally.
Second, this interpretation conicts with the way Aquinas employs
the distinction between the res signicata and the modus signicandi of
terms. We quoted him as saying, in Summa Theologiae I, , , ad , that
certain terms signify perfections absolutely, without any [creaturely]
mode of participation being part of their signication. Given the looming presence of the doctrine of divine simplicity in these articles, he surely
means to include, under the category, creaturely mode of participation,

Herbert McCabe, in the Blackfriars translation that Alston is using, pretty much eliminates the
ambiguity; he translates it Alstons way: But a creature is not like to God as it is like to another
member of its species or genus, but resembles him as an eect may in some way resemble a transcendent cause although failing to reproduce perfectly the form of the cause.

Inquiring about God

the fact that creatures participate in perfections as complex beings rather

than simple. Aquinas teaching is that the res signicata of pure perfection terms is stripped entirely clean of all creaturely modes of signication, including the fact that we participate in perfections as complex
beings.
And third, an implication of this interpretation is a very non-Thomistic
doctrine concerning the learning of language. Aquinas constant doctrine
is that we learn the meaning of our terms from their application to creatures; having learned their meanings, we then extrapolate to using them
in discourse about God. So if Alstons interpretation were correct, we
would rst learn the metaphorical use of good, exists, is alive, etc.,
since it is in their metaphorical use that they are true of creatures; and we
would then extrapolate from that to using the term literally in speaking
of God. Now it may be that you and I do sometimes rst learn a metaphorical use of a term and then later learn its literal use though, so far
as I can see, before learning the literal use we would not realize that we
had all along been using it metaphorically (unless someone explicitly told
us that). But this will be the case when the term in both its metaphorical
and its literal use applies to creatures. I fail to see how we human beings
could rst learn a metaphorical use of these perfection terms and then, by
extrapolation, get a hang on how to use them in speaking literally about
God.
In addition to reasons for not interpreting Aquinas as holding that
perfection terms apply only metaphorically to us, I think there are also
reasons for doubting the ontology that Alston now attributes to Aquinas;
namely, that perfections are not the same in God and in us, the dierence in mode of participation causing a lack of identity in the object of
participation. Here, too, I have three diculties, the rst, once again,
being Aquinas silence on the matter. Or not to pre-judge the case against
Alston, his relative silence his allusiveness. If this were Aquinas position, one would expect him to call attention to it. At best he alludes to it
in the passages Alston cites.
But second, the proposed ontology remains obscure, to say the least.
How are we to understand this purported phenomenon, that a dierence
in ones mode of participation in a perfection makes a dierence in the
perfection in which one participates? Presumably not every dierence in
mode of participation makes such a dierence. What makes for the difference between the cases in which it does make a dierence and those in
which it does not? And why exactly does it make a dierence, in the cases
in which it does?

Alston on Aquinas on theological predication

And third, one has to weigh up against those two rather allusive passages
that Alston cites in favor of his new interpretation, all those other passages
that Alston himself cites when leading up to his statement of the problem
that Aquinas has apparently created for himself. These latter passages seem
to me much more clear in their armation that the perfection is identical,
than are the passages Alston now cites, in their armation that the perfections are not identical. Here is one of those clearer passages. I will quote it
in the translation that Alston was using, that of the Blackfriars:
All the perfections of all things are in God This may be seen from two considerations. First, because whatever perfection exists in an eect must be found
in the producing cause: either in the same formality or in a more eminent
degree Since therefore God is the rst producing cause of things, the perfections of all things must pre-exist in God in a more eminent way Second
God is being itself, of itself subsistent. Consequently, He must contain within
Himself the whole perfection of being Now all the perfections of all things
pertain to the perfection of being: for things are perfect precisely so far as they
have being after some fashion. It follows therefore that the perfection of no thing
is wanting to God. (ST I, , , resp.)

All the perfections of all things are in God. This seems to me as clear a
statement as one could want of the view that the perfections in God and
in us are the same.

If the problem that Alston so acutely identies is not to be solved his way,
how then is it to be solved? Well, Alston assumes, along with all other
interpreters I am familiar with, that when Aquinas is talking about analogous predications of a term, he means to say that the res signicata in the
one instance is analogous to, but not identical with, the res signicata in
the other instance. That is to say, Alston and the other commentators
assume that the property predicated in the one case is not identical with
the property predicated in the other case. In Alstons own words, Aquinas
view is that pure perfection terms are predicated of God in a sense not
exactly the same as that in which they are predicated of creatures but in
a sense that is related to the latter (ATP, ). I suggest that we give up
that assumption. That is not what Aquinas had in mind when he says that
predications as between God and creatures are at best analogous. He is
not saying that the terms predicated have a dierent sense. They have a
dierent mode of signication, undeniably; but the thing designated (signied) is exactly the same.

Inquiring about God

Suppose that you and I held Aquinas ontology. What would we say
on this matter of predication? Given our conviction that God and we
participate in the same perfections, we would say that in assertively uttering God is alive, God is good, God is powerful, and the like, the
predicate terms alive, good, and powerful have exactly the same
sense that they do when we assertively utter, about some human being,
he is alive, he is good, he is powerful. The predicate terms designate
(signify) the same perfection in both cases. In assertively uttering God is
alive and assertively uttering Joe is alive, we are predicating the same
form of two dierent things. But given our other conviction, that God
participates in perfections as a simple being whereas Joe participates in
them as a complex being, we would say that we are claiming a dierent relationship to hold in the two cases though not entirely dierent,
since in both cases we can describe the subject as participating in what
is designated by the predicate term. Its our predicating of the predicate
term to God that is analogous to our predicating it of Joe; the analogy is
to be located, not in the sense (meaning) of the predicate term itself but
in the copula. This, I submit, is what we would say if we held Aquinas
ontology.
And this is what Aquinas says. Consider, once again, his comment in
the sed contra of I, , : That which is predicated of several things according to the same term, but not according to the same ratio, is predicated of
them equivocally. But no term applies (convenit) to God with that ratio
according to which it is said (dicitur) of a creature. The clue to Aquinas
doctrine of analogical predication lies in taking with full seriousness the
reason he proceeds to give for this claim. The reason is that wisdom in
creatures is a quality, though not in God.
In Question of Part I of the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas had argued for
the doctrine of divine simplicity; in God there is no distinction between
God and Gods essence, between God and Gods attributes, between one
of Gods attributes and another, and so forth. It follows that in predicating is wise of God we are claiming a dierent relation to hold between
wisdom and God from that which we claim to hold between wisdom and
some human being when we predicate is wise of that human being. The
is in God is wise necessarily has a dierent force, a dierent ratio,
from the is in Socrates is wise assuming that we are using our words
in such a way that in each case what we say is true. But the force (ratio) of
the copula in the two cases is not completely dierent and unconnected;
the copula is not being used purely equivocally. Its force (ratio) when used
to speak of creatures is analogical to its force (ratio) when used to speak

Alston on Aquinas on theological predication

of God; in both cases one is claiming some mode of participation in the

perfection by the entity referred to.
In short, Aquinas doctrine of analogy pertains to the predicating, not
to whats predicated, to the copula, not to the predicate term. When we
say is wise of God, the predicate term wise is being used literally, as
it is when we say is wise of some human being; but the copula when
used to speak of creatures has a sense that is only analogical to its sense
when used to speak of God. Aquinas uses the literal/metaphorical contrast when speaking of predicate terms; he uses the univocal/analogical
contrast when speaking of the copula.
It might be replied that this amounts to a radical over-interpretation of
Aquinas brief remark in the sed contra of the Fifth Article. But that it was
in fact Aquinas thought, that analogy pertains to the predicating and
not to the term predicated, to the copula and not to the predicate term,
becomes incontestably clear in the respondeo of the article. Let me quote
some of what he says:
Univocal predication is impossible between God and creatures. The reason for
this is that every eect which is not an adequate result of the power of the ecient cause receives the similitude of the agent not in its full degree, but in a
measure that falls short, so that what is divided and multiplied in the eects
resides in the agent simply, and in the same manner; as for example the sun by
the exercise of its one power produces manifold and various forms in all inferior things. In the same way, all perfections existing in creatures divided and
multiplied, pre-exist in God unitedly. Thus when some term pertaining to a perfection is said of a creature, it signies that particular perfection in distinction
from others. For example, when the term wise is said of a human being, we
signify a perfection distinct from the essence of the person, from his powers, his
existence, and from all the other things about him. But when we say this term of
God, we do not intend to signify something distinct from his essence, or power,
or existence Hence it is clear that this term wise is not said of God and of a
human being according to the same ratio. The same point holds for other terms.
Accordingly, no term is predicated univocally of God and creatures. But also
not purely ( pure) equivocally, as some have said Therefore it must be said that
terms are said of God and of creatures according to analogy, that is, proportion.

This is Aquinas argument for holding that our predication of

perfection-terms of God is not univocal with our predication of
perfection-terms of creatures. His argument for holding that it is nonetheless not purely equivocal, but analogical, goes as follows:
Whatever is said of God and creatures is said, according to the relation of a
creature to God as its principle and cause, wherein all perfections of things preexist excellently. Now this mode of community of idea is a mean between pure

Inquiring about God

equivocation and simple univocation. For in analogies the idea is not, as it is in

univocals, one and the same, yet it is not totally diverse as in equivocals; but a
term which is thus used in a multiple sense signies various proportions to some
one thing; thus healthy applied to urine signies the sign of animal health, and
applied to medicine signies the cause of the same health. (ST I, , , resp.)

Our English translations conceal Aquinas thought

That this is Aquinas thought is concealed from us by our English translations. Consider once again the sentence that I quoted from the sed
contra of Summa Theologiae I, , : That which is predicated of several
things according to the same term, but not according to the same ratio,
is predicated of them equivocally. But no term applies (convenit) to God
with that ratio according to which it is said (dicitur) of a creature. The
Blackfriars translation (done by Herbert McCabe, O.P.) renders the second sentence (clause) as follows: but no word when used of God means
the same as when it is used of a creature. This is interpretation, not translation. Aquinas does not say that no word means the same when used of
God as when used of a creature. The Latin is this: Sed nullum nomen
convenit Deo secundum illam rationem, secundum quam dicitur de
creatura. Literally, But no name applies to God according to the same
ratio according to which it is said of a creature. Aquinas does not say that
the term does not mean the same in the two cases; he says that no term is
said of God and of creatures according to the same ratio.
The Dominican translation renders the sentence (clause) this way: But
no name belongs to God in the same sense that it belongs to creatures.
It could be argued, I suppose, that this rendering leaves it ambiguous as
to whether it is the name that has a dierent sense in the two cases or
whether it is the belonging to that is dierent; and this would be a virtue
of the translation, since Aquinas own mode of expression leaves the issue
open. But given that we much more naturally speak of dierent senses
of names (words, terms) than of dierent senses of belonging to, I judge
that the English reader will almost inevitably misinterpret what Aquinas
is saying.
Again, consider the passage from the respondeo of Summa Theologiae I,
, , which I translated this way: Hence it is clear that this term wise
is not said of (dicitur) God and of a human being according to the same
ratio. The same point holds for other terms. McCabe, in the Blackfriars
translation, renders the passage as follows: Hence it is clear that the word
wise is not used in the same sense of God and man, and the same is true

Alston on Aquinas on theological predication

of all other words. But Aquinas does not say that the word is not used
in the same sense. He says that the term is not said of (dicitur) God and
creatures according to the same ratio.
Consider a third passage, part of the sed contra of the same question.
McCabe translates it this way: Wisdom, for example, means a quality
when it is used of creatures, but not when it is applied to God. So then it
must have a dierent meaning, for we have here a dierence in the genus
which is part of the denition. I have already quoted part of the paragraph in my own translation. Let me now quote the whole passage in a
literal translation:
That which is predicated ( praedicatur) of several things according to the same
term, but not according to the same ratio, is predicated of them equivocally. But
no term applies (convenit) to God according to that ratio according to which it
is said of (dicitur) a creature; for wisdom in creatures is a quality, though not in
God. Now a dierent genus changes [the] ratio, since it is part of the denition;
and the point is the same in [i.e., for] others. Therefore that which is said (dicitur) of God and of creatures is said equivocally.

Aquinas does not say that the term wise has a dierent meaning when
applied to God and to creatures.


I mentioned earlier that Alston cited two passages in support of his claim
that Aquinas thinks the perfections in which creatures participate are not
identical with those in which God participates similar to and derived
from, but not identical with. Life, existence, goodness, power, and the like,
are not the same in us as in God. Let me now quote the second passage he
cites in support of his interpretation. It comes from Summa contra Gentiles
I, , . The rst part of the passage, from section , runs as follows:
An eect that does not receive a form specically the same as that through which
the agent acts cannot receive according to a univocal predication the name arising from that form Now, the forms of the things God has made do not measure up to a specic likeness of the divine power: for the things that God has
made receive in a divided and particular way that which in Him is found in a
simple and universal way. It is evident, then, that nothing can be said univocally
of God and other things.

Notice that the way forms in things are said not to measure up to forms
in God is just that God receives forms in a simple way and we receive
forms in a divided way. Its for that reason that nothing can be said

Inquiring about God

univocally of God and us. The saying-of, the predicating-of, is what is

not univocal; the terms predicated designate the same perfection in both
cases.
The passage from section makes the same point:
If, furthermore, an eect should measure up to the species of its cause, it will
not receive the univocal predication of the name unless it receives the same form
according to the same mode of being. For the form of the house that is in the art
of the maker is not univocally the same being in the two locations. Now, even
though the rest of things were to receive a form that is absolutely the same as it
is in God, yet they do not receive it according to the same mode of being. For
as is clear from what we have said, there is nothing in God that is not the divine
being itself, which is not the case with other things. Nothing, therefore, can be
predicated of God and other things univocally.

The same pure perfection terms apply literally to both God and creatures
with respect to their res signicata. Its the act of predicating that is not
univocal or if you prefer, the force of the copula. Of course, if one dissents from Aquinas doctrine of divine simplicity, as Alston and I both
do, then Aquinas reason for holding that the predicating of terms of God
is only analogical to the predicating of terms of creatures falls away.
Those contemporary theologians who hold that no terms apply literally
to God have no support for their contention in Aquinas, nor do those
slightly more guarded ones who hold that predicate terms that apply to
God never have the same sense as those that apply to creatures.

In conclusion, let me return to my vested interest in these matters. I hold
that God speaks that is, discourses, performs illocutionary acts; and as I
indicated earlier, I have argued, in Divine Discourse, that it is philosophically tenable to hold that this is literally true of God. If, when speaking
literally, one predicates of God that God discourses, one says what is true
of God.
In the course of arguing, in the Third Article of Question of Part
I of his Summa Theologiae, that certain terms which apply literally to

Its clear from the three articles under discussion that Alston and I are in agreement on this; he
too has a vested interest in the issue of whether it is literally true that God speaks. In another
article collected in Divine Nature, Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists, Alston
argues that Gods speaking should not be understood as including Gods promising or covenanting; in chapter of Divine Discourse I give reasons for concluding that his argument on this
point is not compelling.

Alston on Aquinas on theological predication

creatures also apply literally to God with respect to their res signicata,
not their modus signicandi Aquinas remarked that perfections which
ow from God to creatures exist in what he calls a more eminent way
in God than in creatures. Take the perfection wisdom. What he means
is that though the res signicata of the term wise, namely, wisdom, is
to be found in both God and creatures, the way in which God is wise is
eminent compared to the way in which we are wise, indeed, pre-eminent.
The dierence that is ontologically most fundamental is that, whereas for
us wisdom is one among other attributes, Gods wisdom is identical with
God. Another dierence, though less fundamental ontologically, is that
whereas we are always limited in what we know, God is unlimited in
knowledge, in wisdom. Being one among other attributes and being limited
with respect to whats known do not, however, belong to the things signied by our term wise, only to its mode of signication.
May it be that similar things are to be said about speech, that is, discourse the performance of illocutionary acts? Is discourse a perfection
that exists eminently in God but only non-eminently, limitedly, in us?
And does being limited in discourse, though not belonging to the res signicata of our term speaks, nonetheless belong to its modus signicandi,
so that though the term applies literally to both God and creatures with
respect to what it signies, it applies to creatures alone with respect to the
way it signies? What we have seen is that, for Aquinas, this question is
dierent from the question as to whether predicating the term speaks of
creatures is only analogical to predicating the term of God, not equivocal.
But since Alston and I deny that God is ontologically simple, Aquinas
reason for holding that predication of terms to God is only analogous to
predication of terms to us is rendered irrelevant.
I doubt that there is an eminent/non-eminent distinction between
God and us with respect to discourse. Eminence with respect to discourse
would presumably consist of being capable of performing any appropriately responsible act of discourse whatsoever, and necessarily so; noneminence would consist of lacking that capacity, or if not lacking it, at
least not possessing it necessarily. Now it is clear that you and I are limited in all sorts of ways in our capacity for performing acts of discourse.
There are countless truths I cannot assert because, among other considerations, I lack the conceptual repertoire for doing so, and so also for
you. And there are countless declarations I cannot make because I lack
the standing requisite for doing so, and so also for you; I cannot make
the judicial declaration guilty, since I am not a judge. But God is also
limited in such ways. Though it is my view, contra Alston, that God can

Inquiring about God

literally promise, nonetheless there are all sorts of promises I can make
that God cannot make. I can promise my grandchildren to drive them
to the zoo; God cannot promise that. And if there are so-called essential
indexicals, with the English personal pronoun I being among them
as I am inclined to think is the case then the proposition I assert when I
assertively utter, I am running late for class, is not one that anyone else,
including God, can assertively utter.
Nonetheless, it is the case that God is very dierent indeed from the
sort of speaker that we come across in our experience thus very dierent
from the sort of person to whom we learn to apply the concept speaking and the word speaks. The persons to whom we learn to apply that
concept and that word are all embodied persons, whereas God has no
body. That dierence between us does not imply, so I have argued, that
it cannot be said literally and truly of God that God speaks that is, discourses. But it does imply, I freely concede, that application to God of the
term speaks or discourses is for us a highly idiosyncratic application
of the term.
I have no objection to using Aquinas conceptuality at this point and
saying that though having a body belongs to the modus signicandi of our
term speaks, it does not belong to the res signicata of the term. Alstons
way of explaining the distinction, in his essay Functionalism and
Theological Language, seems to me here the best. Let me quote again
what he says, changing the example this time from making to speaking :
The most general idea is that the common possession of abstract features is
compatible with as great a dierence as you like in the way in which these features are realized This general point suggests the possibility that the radical
otherness of God might manifest itself in the way in which common abstract
features are realized in the divine being, rather than in the absence of common
features. What it is for God to speak is radically dierent from what it is for a
human being to speak; but that does not rule out an abstract feature in common,
viz., that of performing an illocutionary act.

Divine Nature, .

God everlasting

All Christian theologians agree that God is without beginning and

without end. The vast majority have held, in addition, that God is eternal,
existing outside of time. Only a small minority have contended that God
is everlasting, existing within time. In what follows I shall take up the
cudgels for that minority, arguing that God as conceived and presented by
the biblical writers is a being whose own life and existence is temporal.
The biblical writers do not present God as some passive factor within
reality but as an agent in it. Further, they present God as acting within
human history. The god they present is neither the impassive god of the
Oriental nor the non-historical god of the deist. Indeed, so basic to the
biblical writings is their speaking of God as agent within history that if
one viewed God as only an impassive factor in reality, or as one whose
agency does not occur within human history, one would have to regard
the biblical speech about God as at best one long sequence of metaphors
pointing to a reality for which they are singularly inept, and as at worst
one long sequence of falsehoods.
More specically, the biblical writers present God as a redeeming God.
From times most ancient, human beings have departed from the pattern
of responsibilities awarded them at their creation by God. A multitude of
evils has followed. But God was not content to leave human beings in
the mire of their misery. Aware of what is going on, God has resolved, in
response to the sin of human beings and the resultant evils, to bring about
renewal. God has, indeed, already been acting in accord with that resolve,
centrally and decisively in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
What I shall argue is that if we are to accept this picture of God as
acting for the renewal of human life, we must conceive of God as everlasting rather than eternal. God the Redeemer cannot be a God eternal. This

The most noteworthy contemporary example is Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time, translated by
Floyd V. Filson (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, ).

Inquiring about God

is so because God the Redeemer is a God who changes. And any being
that changes is a being among whose states there is temporal succession.
Of course, there is an important sense in which God as presented in the
Scriptures is changeless: God is steadfast in Gods redeeming intent and
ever faithful to Gods children. Yet, ontologically, God cannot be a redeeming God without there being changeful variation among Gods states.
If this argument proves correct, the importance of the issue here confronting us for Christian theology can scarcely be exaggerated. A theology which opts for God as eternal cannot avoid being in conict with
the confession of God as redeemer. And given the obvious fact that God
is presented in the Bible as a God who redeems, a theology that opts for
God as eternal cannot be a theology faithful to the biblical witness.
My line of argument will prove to be neither subtle nor complicated.
So the question will insistently arise, why have Christian theologians so
massively contended that God is eternal? Why has not the dominant tradition of Christian theology been that of God everlasting?
My argument will depend heavily on taking with seriousness a certain feature of temporality that has been neglected in Western philosophy. But the massiveness of the God-eternal tradition cannot, I am
persuaded, be attributed merely to philosophical oversight. There are, I
think, two factors more fundamental. One is the feeling, deep-seated in
much of human culture, that the owing of events into an irrecoverable
and unchangeable past is a matter for deep regret. Our bright actions
and shining moments do not long endure. The gnawing tooth of time
bites all. And our evil deeds can never be undone. They are forever to be
regretted. Of course, the philosopher is inclined to distinguish the mere
fact of temporality from the actual pattern of the events in history and
to argue that regrets about the latter should not slosh over into regrets
about the former. The philosopher is right. The regrettableness of what
transpires in time is not good ground for regretting that there is time.
Yet where the philosopher sees the possibility and the need for a distinction, most people have seen none. Regrets over the pervasive pattern of
what transpires within time have led whole societies to place the divine
outside of time freed from the bondage of temporality.
But I am persuaded that William Kneale is correct when he contends
that the most important factor accounting for the tradition of God eternal within Christian theology was the inuence of the classical Greek
philosophers on the early theologians. The distinction between eternal

William Kneale, Time and Eternity in Theology, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
(): .

God everlasting

being and everlasting being was drawn for the rst time in the history of
thought by Plato (Timaeus ), though the language he uses is reminiscent of words used still earlier by Parmenides. Plato does not connect
eternity and divinity, but he does make clear his conviction that eternal
being is the highest form of reality. This was enough to inuence the
early Christian theologians, who did their thinking within the milieu of
Hellenic and Hellenistic thought, to assign eternity to God. Thus was the
fateful choice made.
A good many twentieth-century theologians have been engaged in
what one might call the dehellenization of Christian theology. If Kneales
contention is correct, then in this essay I am participating in that activity. Of course, not every bit of dehellenization is laudatory from the
Christian standpoint, for not everything that the Greeks said is false.
What is the case, though, is that the patterns of classical Greek thought
are incompatible with the pattern of biblical thought. And in facing the
issue of God everlasting versus God eternal we are dealing with the fundamental pattern of biblical thought. Indeed, I am persuaded that unless
the tradition of God eternal is renounced, fundamental dehellenizing
will perpetually occupy itself in the suburbs, never advancing to the city
center. Every attempt to purge Christian theology of the traces of incompatible Hellenic patterns of thought must fail unless it removes the roadblock of the God-eternal tradition. Around this barricade there are no
detours.

Before we can discuss whether God is outside of time we must ask what
it would be for something to be outside of time. That is, before we can
ask whether God is eternal we must ask what it would be for something
to be eternal. But this in turn demands that we be clear on what it would
be for something to be a temporal entity. We need not be clear on all the
features which something has by virtue of being temporal on all facets
of temporality but we must at least be able to say what is necessary and
sucient for somethings being in time.
For our purposes we can take as the decisive feature of temporality
the exemplication of the temporal-ordering relations of precedence, succession, and simultaneity. Unless some entities did stand to each other
in one or the other of these relations, there would be no temporal reality. Conversely, if there is temporal reality then there are pairs of entities whose members stand to each other in the relation of one occurring

Inquiring about God

before (precedence) or one occurring after (succession) or one occurring

simultaneously with (simultaneity) the other.
We must ask in turn what sort of entity is such that its examples can
stand to each other in the relations of precedence, succession, and simultaneity. For not every sort of entity is such. The members of a pair of trees
cannot stand in these relations. The golden chain tree outside my back
door neither occurs before nor after nor simultaneously with the shingle
oak outside my front door. Of course, the sprouting of the former stands
in one of these relations to the sprouting of the latter ; and so too does the
demise of the latter to the demise of the former. But the trees themselves do
not. They do not occur at all.
We have in this example a good clue, though, as to the sort of entity
whose examples can stand in the relations of precedence, succession, and
simultaneity. It is just such entities as the demise of my golden chain tree
and the sprouting of my shingle oak. It is, in short, what I shall call events
that stand in these relations.
As I conceive of an event, it consists in somethings actually having some property, or somethings actually performing some action, or
somethings actually standing in some relation to something. Events as
I conceive them are all actual occurrences. They are not what can have
occurrences. They are, rather, themselves occurrences. Furthermore, as I
conceive of events, there may be two or more events consisting in a given
entitys having a given property (or performing a given action). For example, my golden chain tree owered last spring and is owering again this
spring. So there are two events each consisting in the owering of my
golden chain tree. One began and ended last year. The other began and
will end this year.
Such events as I have thus far oered by way of example are all temporally limited, in the sense that there are times at which the event is not
occurring. There are times at which it has not yet begun or has already
ended. Last years owering of my golden chain tree is such. It began at
some time last spring and has now for about a year or so ceased. But there
are other events which are not in this way temporally limited s being
prime, for example. (The event of threes being prime sounds strange;
but recall our denition of event. If time itself begins and ends, then
this event, too, occurs wholly within a nite interval. Yet even then there
is no time at which it does not occur.)
I said that every event consists in somethings actually having
some property, actually performing some action, or actually standing in
some relation to something. So consider some event e which consists in

God everlasting

some entity a having some property or performing some action or standing

in some relation. Let us call a a subject of e. And let us call e an aspect of
a. A given event may well have more than one subject. For example, an
event consisting of my sitting under my shingle oak has both me and the
shingle oak as subjects. Indeed, I think it can also be viewed as having
the relation of sitting under as subject. I see nothing against regarding an
event consisting of my sitting under my shingle oak as identical with an
event consisting of the relation of sitting under being exemplied by me
with respect to my shingle oak.
Now consider that set of a given entitys aspects such that each member
bears a temporal-order relation to every member of the set and none bears
a temporal-order relation to any aspect not a member of the set. Let us
call that set, provided that it is not empty, the time-strand of that entity.
I assume it to be true that every entity has at most one time-strand. That
is, I assume that no entity has two or more sets of temporally interrelated
aspects such that no member of the one set bears any temporal-order relation to any member of the other. I do not, however, assume that each of
the aspects of every entity which has a time-strand belongs to the strand.
And as to whether every entity has at least one time-strand that of
course is involved in the question as to whether anything is eternal.
Consider, next, a set of events such that each member stands to every
member in one of the temporal-order relations, and such that no member
stands to any event which is not a member in any of these relations. I
shall call such a set a temporal array. A temporal array is of course just the
union of a set of time-strands such that every member of each member
strand bears some temporal-order relation to every member of every other
member strand, and such that no member of any member strand bears
any temporal-order relation to any member of any strand which is not a
member of the set. In what follows I assume that there is but one temporal array. I assume, that is, that every member of every time-strand bears a
temporal-order relation to every member of every time-strand.
Now suppose that there is some entity all of whose aspects are such
that they are to be found in no temporal array whatsoever. Such an entity
would be, in the most radical way possible, outside of time. Accordingly,
I shall dene eternal thus:
Def. : x is eternal if and only if x has no aspect that is a member of the temporal
array.

An alternative denition would have been this: x is eternal if and only

if x has no time-strand. The dierence between the two denitions is

Inquiring about God

that, on the latter, an entity is eternal if none of its aspects bears any
temporal-order relation to any of those events which are its aspects;
whereas on the former, what is required of an entity for it to be eternal
is that none of its aspects be related by any temporal-order relation to
any event whatsoever. Of course, if every event which bears any temporalorder relation to any event whatsoever is also simultaneous with itself,
then everything which fails to satisfy the temporal array denition of
eternal will also fail to satisfy the time-strand denition.
At this point, certain ambiguities in the concepts of precedence, succession, and simultaneity should be resolved. By saying that event e occurs
simultaneously with event e, I mean that there is some time at which both
e and e are occurring. I do not mean though indeed this might reasonably also have been meant by the words that there is no time at which
one of e and e is occurring and the other is not. When two events stand
in that latter relation I shall say that they are wholly simultaneous. By saying that e precedes e, I mean that there is some time at which e but not
e is occurring, which precedes all times at which e is occurring. I do not
mean that every time at which e occurs precedes every time at which e
occurs. When e stands to e in this latter relationship, I shall say that it
wholly precedes e. Lastly, by saying that e succeeds e, I mean that there
is some time at which e but not e is occurring which succeeds all times
at which e is occurring. This, as in the case of precedence, allows for
overlap. And, as in the case of precedence, an overlapping case of succession may be distinguished from a case in which one event wholly succeeds
another.
When simultaneity, precedence, and succession are understood
thus, they do not stand for exclusive relations. An event e may precede,
occur simultaneously with, and succeed, another event e. But of course
e cannot wholly precede e while also being wholly simultaneous with it,
and so forth for the other combinations.
Reecting on the consequences of the above denitions and explanations, someone might protest that the denition of eternal is altogether
too stringent. For consider, say, the number . This, no doubt, was referred
to by Euclid and also by Cantor. So, by our explanation of aspect, s
being referred to by Euclid was an aspect of the number , and s being
referred to by Cantor was another aspect thereof. And of course the former
preceded the latter. So, by our denition, is not eternal. But it may
be protested the fact that something is successively referred to should
not be regarded as ground for concluding that it is not eternal. For after
all, successive references to something do not produce any change in it.

God everlasting

Although they produce variation among its aspects, they do not produce
a changeful variation among them.
In response to this protest it must be emphasized that the concept of an
eternal being is not identical with the concept of an unchanging being.
The root idea behind the concept of an eternal being is not that of one
which does not change but rather that of one which is outside of time.
And a question of substance is whether an unchanging being may fail to
be eternal. The most thoroughgoing and radical way possible for an entity
to be outside of time is that which something enjoys if it satises our denition of eternal. And it must simply be acknowledged that if an entity
is successively referred to, then it is not in the most thoroughgoing way
outside of time. There is temporal succession among its aspects.
However, the idea of change could be used by the protester in another
way. It is indeed true that not every variation among the aspects of an
entity constitutes change therein. Only variation among some of them
call them its change-relevant aspects does so. So on the ground that the
change-relevant aspects of an entity are more basic to it, we might distinguish between something being fundamentally non-eternal and something being trivially non-eternal. Something is fundamentally non-eternal
if it fails to satisfy the concept of being eternal by virtue of some of its
change-relevant aspects. Something is trivially non-eternal if its failure to
satisfy the concept of being eternal is not by virtue of any of its changerelevant aspects.
Now in fact it will be change-relevant aspects of God to which I will
appeal in arguing that God is not eternal. Thus my argument will be that
God is fundamentally non-eternal.

In order to present our argument that God is fundamentally non-eternal
we must now take note of a second basic feature of temporality; namely,
that all temporal reality comes in the three modes of past, present, and
future.
An important fact about the temporal array is that some events within
it are present : they are occurring ; some are past : they were occurring ; some

There are two other basic features of temporality: one is the phenomenon of temporal location the fact that events occur at or within intervals. The other is the phenomenon of temporal
duration the fact that intervals have lengths. In the preceding discussion, I repeatedly made
appeal to the phenomenon of temporal location without calling attention to doing so.

Inquiring about God

are future: they will be occurring. Indeed, every event is either past or
present or future. And not only is this the case now. It always was the
case in the past that every event was either past or present or future. And
it always will be the case in the future that every event is either past or
present or future. Further, every event in the array is such that it either
was present or is present or will be present. No event can be past unless
it was present. No event can be future unless it will be present. Thus the
present is the most basic of the three modes of temporality. To be past is
just to have been present. To be future is just to be going to be present.
Further, if an event is past, it presently is past. If an event is future, it presently is future. In this way, too, the present is fundamental.
The reason every event in the temporal array is either past, present, or
future is as follows: in order to be in the array at all, an event must occur
either before or after or at the same time as some other event. But then,
of course, it must occur sometime. And when an event is occurring it
is present. So consider any event e which is to be found in the temporal
array. If e is occurring, e is present. If, on the other hand, e is not occurring, then e either precedes or succeeds what is occurring. For some event
is presently occurring. And every event in the array either precedes or
succeeds or is wholly simultaneous with every other. But if e were wholly
simultaneous with what is occurring, e itself would be occurring. So e
either succeeds or precedes what is occurring if it is not itself occurring.
Now for any event x to precede any event y is just for x sometime to be
past when y is not past. So if e precedes what is occurring and is not
itself occurring, then e is past. On the other hand, for any event x to succeed any event y is just for x sometime to be future when y is not future.
So if e succeeds what is occurring and is not itself occurring, then e is
future. Hence everything to be found in the temporal array is either past,
present, or future.
In contemporary Western philosophy the phenomenon of temporal modality has been pervasively neglected or ignored in favor of the
phenomena of temporal-order relationships, temporal location, and
temporal duration. Thus time has been spatialized. For though space
provides us with close analogues to all three of these latter phenomena,
it provides us with no analogue whatever to the past/present/future
distinction.

A recent example of the neglect of temporal modality in favor of temporal location is to be found
in David Lewis, Anselm and Actuality, No s (): . Concluding several paragraphs of
discussion he says, If we take a timeless view and ignore our own location in time, the big dierence between the present time and other times vanishes.

God everlasting

Perhaps the most fundamental and consequential manifestation of this

neglect is to be found in the pervasive assumption that all propositions
expressed with tensed sentences are mode-indierent and dated. Consider
for example the tensed sentence My golden chain tree is owering. The
assumption is that what I would assert if I now (June , ) assertively
uttered this sentence with normal sense is that my golden chain tree is or
was or will be owering on June , . And that the proposition I would be
asserting if I assertively uttered the same sentence on June , , is that my
golden chain tree is or was or will be owering on June , . And so forth.
In order to see clearly what the assumption in question comes to, it
will be helpful to introduce a way of expressing tenses alternative to that
found in our natural language. We begin by introducing the three tense
operators, P, T, and F. These are to be read, respectively, as it was the
case that, it is the case that, and it will be the case that. They are to
be attached as prexes either to sentences in the present tense which lack
any such prex, or to compound sentences which consist of sentences in
the present tense with one or more such prexes attached. And the result
of attaching one such operator to a sentence is to yield a new sentence.
For example: P (my golden chain tree is owering), to be read as, it was
the case that my golden chain tree is owering. And: F [P (my golden chain
tree is owering)], to be read as: it will be the case that it was the case that
my golden chain tree is owering.
So consider any sentence s which is either a present tense sentence with
no operators prexed or a compound sentence consisting of a present tense
sentence with one or more operators prexed. The proposition expressed
by P(s) is true if and only if the proposition expressed by s was true (in the
past). The proposition expressed by T(s) is true if and only if the proposition expressed by s is true (now, in the present). And the proposition
expressed by F(s) is true if and only if the proposition expressed by s will
be true (in the future).
Any proposition expressed by a tensed sentence from ordinary speech
can be expressed by a sentence in this alternative language. Thus My
golden chain tree was owering has as its translational equivalent P (my

See the writings of Arthur Prior, especially Time and Modality (Oxford University Press, );
Past, Present and Future (Oxford University Press, ); and Time and Tense (Oxford University
Press, ).
Th is reects the fact that the past is what was present ; the future what will be present.
Thus, strictly speaking, the T operator is unnecessary. Attaching T to any sentence s always yields
a sentence which expresses the same proposition as does s by itself. Th is reects the fact that what
is past is presently past, what is future is presently future, and, of course, what is present is presently
present.

Inquiring about God

golden chain tree is owering). And My golden chain tree will have
been owering has as its translational equivalent F [P (my golden chain
tree is owering)].
Let us now introduce a fourth tense operator, D, dening this one in
terms of the preceding three thus:
Def. : D( ), if and only if P ( ) or T( ) or F ( ).

And let us read it as: It was or is or will be the case that Let us call
this the tense-indi erent tense operator. And, correspondingly, let us call a
sentence which has at least one tense operator and all of whose tense operators are tense-indierent, a wholly tense-indi erent sentence. Furthermore,
as the ordinary language counterpart to the tense-indierent operator let
us use the verb in its present tense with a bar over it, thus: My golden
chain tree is owering. Or My golden chain tree owers.
Finally, let us add to our linguistic stock a certain set of modiers of
these tense operators modiers of the form at t, before t, and after
t, where t stands in for some expression designating a time which is such
that that expression can be used to designate that time no matter whether
that time is in the past, present, or future. These modiers are to be
attached to our tense operators, thus: P at ( ). The result of attaching one to an operator is to yield an operator of a new form what one
might call a dated tense operator. The proposition expressed by a sentence
of the form P at t(s) is true if and only if the proposition expressed by s
was true at or within time t. The proposition expressed by T at t(s) is true
if and only if the proposition expressed by s is true at or within time t.
And the proposition expressed by F at t(s) is true if and only if the proposition expressed by s will be true at or within time t. Thus the proposition
expressed by P at (my golden chain tree is owering) is true if and
only if my golden chain tree was owering at or within . Similarly,
the proposition expressed by a sentence of the form P before t(s) is true if
and only if the proposition expressed by s was true before t ; likewise for
T before t(s) and F before t(s). And the proposition expressed by a sentence
of the form P after t(s) is true if and only if the proposition expressed by s
was true after t ; likewise for T after t(s) and F after t(s). Let us call a sentence which has tense operators and all of whose tense operators are dated
ones, a fully dated sentence.
The assumption underlying a great deal of contemporary philosophy
can now be stated thus: every proposition expressed by a sentence that is
not wholly tense-indierent and not fully dated is a proposition that can
be expressed by some sentence that is wholly tense-indierent and fully

God everlasting

dated. Consider, for example, the sentence T (my golden chain tree is
owering) the translational equivalent of the ordinary sentence, My
golden chain tree is owering. Suppose that I assertively utter this sentence on June , . The assumption is that the proposition I assert by
uttering this sentence is that which is expressed by D at June , (my
golden chain tree is owering). And in general, where s is some present
tense sentence, the assumption is that the proposition asserted by assertively uttering s at time t is just that which would be asserted by assertively
uttering D at t(s). Similarly, it is assumed that the proposition asserted by
assertively uttering P(s) at time t is that which would be asserted by assertively uttering D before t(s). And it is assumed that the proposition asserted
by assertively uttering F(s) at time t is that which would be asserted by
assertively uttering D after t(s).
On this view, tense-committed sentences are characteristically used to
assert dierent propositions on dierent occasions of use. For example, if
the sentence My golden chain tree is owering is assertively uttered on
June , it is being used to assert that it is or was or will be the case on June
that my golden chain tree is owering; whereas, if uttered on June , it
is being used to assert that it is or was or will be the case on June that
my golden chain tree is owering. Whether this view is correct will be
considered shortly. If it is, then tense-committed sentences are in that way
dierent from wholly tense-indierent sentences. For these latter are used
to assert the same proposition on all occasions of utterance.
I think we now have the assumption in question clearly enough before
us to weigh its acceptability. It is in fact clearly false. To see this, suppose
that I now (June , ) assertively utter the sentences My golden chain
tree is owering and D at June , (my golden chain tree is owering). The proposition asserted with the former entails that the owering
of my golden chain tree is something that is occurring, now, presently.
But the latter does not entail this at all. In general, if someone assertively utters a present tense sentence s at t, what he asserts is true if and
only if the proposition expressed by D at t(s) is true. Yet s and D at
t(s) express distinct propositions. So also, if I now assertively utter My
golden chain tree was owering, what I assert entails that the owering
of my golden chain tree is something that did take place, in the past.
Whereas the proposition asserted with D before June , (my golden
chain tree is owering) does not entail this. And this non-identity of
the propositions holds even though it is the case that if someone assertively utters P(s) at t, what he asserts is true if and only if the proposition
D before t(s) is true.

Inquiring about God

Just as a wholly tense-indierent sentence is used to assert the same

proposition no matter what the time of utterance, so, too, the proposition asserted with such a sentence does not vary in truth value. If it is
ever true, it is always true, that D at June , (my golden chain tree is
owering). And if it is ever false, it is always false. Such a proposition is
constant in its truth value. But an implication of the failure of the contemporary assumption is that the same cannot be said for the propositions expressed by tense-committed sentences. At least some of these are
such that they are sometimes true, sometimes false. They are variable in
their truth value. For example, My golden chain tree is owering is now
true; but two weeks ago it was false.
So the situation is not that in successively uttering a tense-committed
sentence we are asserting distinct propositions, each of which is constant
in truth value and each of which could also be expressed with wholly
tense indierent, fully dated, sentences. The situation is rather that we
are repeatedly asserting a proposition that is variable in its truth value.
Contemporary philosophers, along with assuming the dispensability of
the temporal modes, have assumed that all propositions are constant in
truth value. Platos lust for eternity lingers on.
Though philosophers have ignored the modes of time in their theories,
we as human beings are all aware of the past/present/future distinction.
For without such knowledge we would be lost in the temporal array.
Suppose one knew, for each event x, which events occur simultaneously
with x, which occur before x, and which occur after x. (Recall the signicance of the bar over a present-tense verb.) Then with respect to, say,
Luthers posting of his theses, one would know which events occur simultaneously therewith, which occur before it, and which occur after it.
And so forth, for all other temporal interrelations of events. There would
then still be something of enormous importance which one would not
on that account know. One would not know where we are in the array
of temporally ordered events. For one would not know which events are
occurring, which were occurring, and which will be occurring. To know
this it is not sucient to know, with respect to every event, which events
occur simultaneously therewith, which occur before, and which occur
after.
Nor, as we have seen above, is such knowledge gained by knowing what
occurs at what time. If all I know with respect to events el en, is that
they all occur at the time, say, of the inauguration of the rst post-Nixon
president, then I do not yet know whether those events are in the past,
in the present, or in the future. And if all my knowledge with respect

God everlasting

to every event and every interval is of that decient sort, I do not know
where we are in the temporal array. For I do not know which events are
present, which are past, and which are future.


It might seem obvious that God, as described by the biblical writers, is a
being who changes, and who accordingly is fundamentally non-eternal.
For God is described as a being who acts in creation, in providence, and
for the renewal of humankind. God is an agent, not an impassive factor in
reality. And from the manner in which Gods acts are described, it seems
obvious that many of them have beginnings and endings, that accordingly they stand in succession relations to each other, and that these successive acts are of such a sort that their presence and absence on Gods
time-strand constitutes changes thereon. Thus it seems obvious that God
is fundamentally non-eternal.
God is spoken of as calling Abraham to leave Chaldea and later
instructing Moses to return to Egypt. So does not the event of Gods
instructing Moses succeed that of Gods calling Abraham? And does not
this sort of succession constitute a change on Gods time-strand not
a change in Gods essence, but nonetheless a change on Gods timestrand? Again, God is spoken of as leading Israel through the Red Sea
and later sending Gods Son into the world. So does not Gods doing the
latter succeed Gods doing the former? And does not the fact of this sort
of succession constitute a change along Gods time-strand?
In short, it seems evident that the biblical writers regard God as having a time-strand of Gods own on which actions on Gods part are to
be found, and that some at least of these actions vary in such a way that
there are changes along the strand. It seems evident that they do not
regard changes on time-strands as conned to entities in Gods creation.
The God who acts, in the way in which the biblical writers speak of God
as acting, seems clearly to change.
Furthermore, is it not clear from how they speak that the biblical
writers regarded many of Gods acts as bearing temporal-order relations
to events that are not aspects of God but rather aspects of the earth, of
ancient human beings, and so forth? The four cited above, for example,
seem all to be described thus. It seems obvious that Gods actions as
described by the biblical writers stand in temporal-order relations to all
the other events in our own time-array.

Inquiring about God

However, I think it is not at all so obvious as on rst glance it might

appear that the biblical writers do in fact describe God as changing.
Granted that the language they use suggests this. It is not at once clear
that this is what they wished to say with this language. It is not clear that
this is how they were describing God. Let us begin to see why this is so by
reecting on the following passage from St. Thomas Aquinas:
Nor, if the action of the rst agent is eternal, does it follow that His eect is eternal. God acts voluntarily in the production of things. Gods act of understanding and willing is, necessarily, His act of making. Now, an eect follows
from the intellect and the will according to the determination of the intellect
and the command of the will. Moreover, just as the intellect determines every
other condition of the thing made, so does it prescribe the time of its making;
for art determines not only that this thing is to be such and such, but that it is
to be at this particular time, even as a physician determines that a dose of medicine is to be drunk at such and such a particular time, so that, if his act of will
were of itself sucient to produce the eect, the eect would follow anew from
his previous decision, without any new action on his part. Nothing, therefore,
prevents our saying that Gods action existed from all eternity, whereas its eect
was not present from eternity, but existed at that time when, from all eternity,
He ordained it.

Let us henceforth call an event that neither begins nor ends an everlasting event. And let us call an event that either begins or ends, a temporal event. In the passage above, St. Thomas is considering Gods acts
of bringing about temporal events. So consider some such act; say, that
of Gods bringing about Israels deliverance from Egypt. The temporal
event in question, Israels deliverance from Egypt, occurred (let us say)
in . But from the fact that what God brought about occurred in
it does not follow, says Aquinas, that Gods act of bringing it about
occurred in . In fact, it does not follow that this act had any beginning or ending whatsoever. And in general, suppose that God brings
about some temporal event e. From the fact that e is temporal it does
not follow, says Aquinas, that Gods act of bringing about e s occurrence
is temporal. The temporality of the event that God brings about does not
infect Gods act of bringing it about. Gods act of bringing it about may
well be everlasting. This can perhaps more easily be seen, he says, if we
remember that God, unlike us, does not have to take steps so as to bring
about the occurrence of some event. God need only will that it occur. If
God just wants it to be the case that e occur at t, then e occurs at t.

Summa contra Gentiles II, ; cf. II, , . I use the edition translated and edited by Anton C.
Pegis (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, ).

God everlasting

Thus God can bring about changes in our history without Godself
changing. The occurrence of the event of Israels deliverance from
Egypt constitutes a change in our history. But there is no counterpart change among Gods aspects by virtue of God bringing this event
about.
Now let us suppose that the four acts of God cited above instructing
Moses, calling Abraham, leading Israel through the Red Sea, and sending
Gods Son into the world regardless of the impression we might gain
from the biblical language used to describe them, also have the structure
of Gods bringing about the occurrence of some temporal event. Suppose,
for example, that Gods leading Israel through the Red Sea has the structure of Gods bringing it about that Israels passage through the Red Sea
occurs. And suppose Aquinas is right that the temporality of Israels passage does not infect with temporality Gods act of bringing about this
passage. Then what is strictly speaking the case is not that Gods leading Israel through the Red Sea occurs during . What is rather the
case is that Israels passage through the Red Sea occurs during , and
that God brings this passage about. And the temporality of the passage
does not entail the temporality of Gods bringing it about. This latter
may be everlasting. So, likewise, the fact that the occurrence of this passage marks a change in our history does not entail that Gods bringing
it about marks a change among Gods aspects. God may unchangingly
bring about historical changes.
It is natural, at this point, to wonder whether we do not have in hand
here a general strategy for interpreting the biblical language about God
acting. Is it not perhaps the case that all those acts of God that the biblical writers speak of as beginning or as ending really consist in God performing the everlasting event of bringing about the occurrence of some
temporal event?
Well, God does other things with respect to temporal events than
bringing about their occurrence. For example, God also knows them. Why
then should it be thought that the best way to interpret all the temporalevent language used to describe Gods actions is by reference to Gods
action of bringing about the occurrence of some event? May it not be
that the best way to interpret what is said with some of such language is
by reference to one of those other acts that God performs with respect to
temporal events? But then if God is not to change, it is not only necessary
that the temporality of e not infect Gods act of bringing about the occurrence of e, but also that every act of God such that God performs it with
respect to e not be infected by the temporality of e. For example, if God

Inquiring about God

knows some temporal event e, Gods knowledge of e must not be infected

by the temporality of e.
So the best way of extrapolating from Aquinas hint would probably
be along the lines of the following theory concerning Gods actions and
the biblical speech about them. All Gods actions are everlasting. None
has either beginning or ending. Of these everlasting acts, the structure
of some consists in Gods performing some action with respect to some
event. And at least some of the events that God acts with respect to
are temporal events. However, in no case does the temporality of the
event that God acts with respect to infect the event of Gods acting.
On the contrary, Gods acting with respect to some temporal event
is itself invariably an everlasting event. So whenever the biblical writers use temporal-event language to describe Gods actions, they are to
be interpreted as thereby claiming that God acts with respect to some
temporal event. They are not to be interpreted as claiming that Gods
acting is itself a temporal event. God as described by the biblical writers is to be interpreted as acting, and as acting with respect to temporal
events. But God is not to be interpreted as changing. All Gods acts are
everlasting.
This, I think, is a fascinating theory. If true, it provides a way of harmonizing the fundamental biblical teaching that God is a being who acts
in our history, with the conviction that God does not change. How far
the proposed line of biblical interpretation can be carried out, I do not
know. I am not aware of any theologian who has ever tried to carry it
out, though there are a great many theologians who might have relieved
the tension in their thought by developing and espousing it. But what
concerns us here is not so much what the theory can adequately deal with
as what it cannot adequately deal with. Does the theory in fact provide us
with a wholly satisfactory way of harmonizing the biblical presentation of
God as acting in history with the conviction that God is fundamentally
eternal?
Before we set about looking for a refutation of the theory it should
be observed, though, that even if the theory were true God would still
not be eternal. For consider Gods acts of bringing about Abrahams
leaving of Chaldea and of bringing about Israels passage through the
Red Sea. These would both be, on the theory, everlasting acts. Both are
always occurring. Hence they occur simultaneously. They stand to each
other in the temporal-order relation of simultaneity. And since both are
aspects of God, God accordingly has a time-strand on which these acts
are to be found. Hence God is not eternal. Further, these are surely

God everlasting

change-relevant aspects of God. Hence God is fundamentally noneternal.

Though I myself think that this argument is sound, it would not be
decisive if presented to Aquinas. For Aquinas held that God is simple.
And an implication of this contention on his part is that all aspects of
God are identical. Hence in Gods case there are no two aspects that are
simultaneous with each other; for there are no two aspects at all.
A reply is possible. For consider that which is, on Aquinas theory,
Gods single aspect; and refer to it as you will say, as Gods being omnipotent. This aspect presumably occurs at the same time as itself. Whenever
it occurs, it is itself occurring. It is simultaneous with itself. Furthermore,
it occurs simultaneously with every temporal event whatsoever. Since
Gods being omnipotent is always occurring, it overlaps all temporal
events whatsoever. So once again we have the conclusion: God is noneternal, indeed, God is fundamentally non-eternal.
It is true, though, that even if Aquinas were to accept this last argument
he would not say, in conclusion, that God was non-eternal. For Aquinas
dened an eternal being as one that is without beginning and without end,
and that has no succession among its aspects. Thus as Aquinas dened
eternal, an eternal being may very well have aspects that stand to each
other in the temporal-order relation of simultaneity. What Aquinas ruled
out was just aspects standing in the temporal-order relation of succession.
Our own denition of eternal, which disallows simultaneity as well as
succession, is in this way more thoroughgoing than is Aquinas. For a
being at least one of whose aspects occurs simultaneously with some event
is not yet, in the most radical way possible, outside of time. However, in
refutation of the extrapolated Thomistic theory sketched out above I shall
now oer an argument against Gods being eternal which establishes that
there is not only simultaneity but also succession among Gods aspects,
and not just succession but also changeful succession. This argument will
be as relevant to the issue of Gods being eternal on Aquinas denition of
eternal as it is on my own denition.
To refute the extrapolated Thomistic theory we would have to do
one or the other of two things. We would have to show that some of

By a similar argument the number can be seen to be fundamentally non-eternal. Surely s being
odd and s being prime are both change-relevant aspects of . If either of these were for a while
an aspect of and then for a while not, we would conclude that had changed. But these two
aspects occur simultaneously with each other. They stand to each other in the temporal-order
relation of simultaneity. Hence is fundamentally non-eternal.
See Summa Theologiae I, , .

Inquiring about God

the temporal-event language the biblical writers use in speaking of Gods

actions cannot properly be construed in the suggested way that is, cannot be construed as used to put forth the claim that God acts in some
way with respect to some temporal events. Or, alternatively, we would
have to show that some of the actions that God performs with respect to
temporal events are themselves temporal, either because they are infected
by the temporality of the events or for some other reason.
One way of developing this latter alternative would be to show that
some of Gods actions must be understood as a response to the free actions
of human beings that what God does, God sometimes does in response
to what some human being does. I think this is in fact the case. And I
think it follows, given that all human actions are temporal, that those
actions of God which are response actions are temporal as well. But to
develop this line of thought would be to plunge us deep into questions
of divine omniscience and human freedom. So I shall make a simpler,
though I think equally eective, objection to the theory, arguing that in
the case of certain of Gods actions the temporality of the event that God
acts on infects Gods own action with temporality.
Three such acts are the diverse though similar acts of knowing about
some temporal event that it is occurring (that it is present), of knowing
about some temporal event that it was occurring (that it is past), and of
knowing about some temporal event that it will be occurring (that it is
future). Consider the rst of these. No one can know about some temporal event e that it is occurring except when it is occurring. Before e has
begun to occur one cannot know that it is occurring, for it is not. Nor
after e has ceased to occur can one know that it is occurring, for it is not.
So suppose that e has a beginning. Then Ps knowing about e that it is
occurring cannot occur until e begins. And suppose that e has an ending.
Then Ps knowing about e that it is occurring cannot occur beyond e s
cessation. But every temporal event has (by denition) either a beginning
or an ending. So every case of knowing about some temporal event that it
is occurring itself either begins or ends (or both). Hence the act of knowing about e that it is occurring is infected by the temporality of e. So also,
the act of knowing about e that it was occurring, and the act of knowing
about e that it will be occurring, are infected by the temporality of e.
But God, as the biblical writers describe God, performs all three of these
acts, and performs them on temporal events. God knows what is happening in our history, what has happened, and what will happen. Hence,
some of Gods actions are themselves temporal events. But surely the nonoccurrence followed by the occurrence followed by the non-occurrence of

God everlasting

such knowings constitutes a change on Gods time-strand. Accordingly,

God is fundamentally non-eternal.
It is important, if the force of this argument is to be discerned, that one
distinguish between, on the one hand, the act of knowing about some
event e that it occurs at some time t (recall the signicance of the bar)
and, on the other hand, the act of knowing about e that it is occurring or
of knowing that it was occurring or of knowing that it will be occurring.
Knowing about e that it occurs at t is an act not infected by the temporality of the event known. That Calvins ight from Geneva occurs in is
something that can be known at any and every time whatsoever. For it
is both true, and constant in its truth value. But that Calvins ight from
Geneva is occurring is variable in its truth value. It once was true, it now is
false. And since one can know only what is true, this proposition cannot
be known at every time. It cannot be known now. God can know, concerning every temporal event whatsoever, what time that event occurs at,
without such knowledge of Gods being temporal. But God cannot know
concerning any temporal event whatsoever that it is occurring, or know
that it was occurring, or know that it will be occurring, without that
knowledge being itself temporal.
Similarly, we must distinguish between, on the one hand, the act of
knowing about some temporal event e that it occurs simultaneously with
events e en after events f fn and before events g gn; and, on the
other hand, the act of knowing about e that it is occurring or of knowing
that it was occurring or of knowing that it will be occurring. Knowledge
of the former sort is not infected by the temporality of the event whose
temporal-order relationships are known. Knowledge of the latter sort is. I
know now that Calvins ight from Geneva occurs after Luthers posting
of his theses occurs. But once again, I do not and cannot now know that
Calvins ight is occurring. Because it is not. So too, God once knew that
Calvins ight from Geneva is occurring. But God no longer knows this.
For God, too, does not know that which is not so. Thus, in this respect
Gods knowledge has changed. But God always knows that Calvins ight
from Geneva occurs after Luthers posting of his theses occurs. Only if

Th is line of argument is adumbrated by Arthur Prior here and there in his essay Formalities of
Omniscience, in Time and Tense. It is also adumbrated by Norman Kretzmann, Omniscience
and Immutability, Journal of Philosophy (): . The essence of the argument is
missed in discussions of Kretzmanns paper by Hector Castaneda, Omniscience and Indexical
Reference, Journal of Philosophy (): ; and Nelson Pike, God and Timelessness (New
York: Schocken Books, ), ch. . Castaneda and Pike fail to take the modes of time with full
seriousness; as a partial defense of them it should perhaps be admitted as not wholly clear that
Kretzmann himself does so.

Inquiring about God

time lacked modes and only if propositions were all constant in truth
value could Gods knowledge be unchanging assuming that Gods
knowledge comprises temporal as well as everlasting events.
The act of remembering that e has occurred is also an act infected by
the temporality of e (remembering is, of course, a species of knowing).
For one can only remember that e has occurred after e has occurred. P
remembers that e occurs entails that e has occurred. So if e is an event
that has a beginning, then the act of remembering that e has occurred has
a beginning. But some events with beginnings are such that God remembers their occurrence. Consequently this act on Gods part is also a temporal event. It, too, cannot be everlasting.
God is also described by the biblical writers as planning that God
would bring about certain events which God does. This, too, is impossible if God does not change. For consider some event which someone
brings about, and suppose that he planned to bring it about. His planning to bring it about must occur before the planned event occurs. For
otherwise it is not a case of planning.
So in conclusion, if God were eternal, God could not be aware, concerning any temporal event, that it is occurring nor aware that it was
occurring nor aware that it will be occurring; nor could God remember
that it has occurred; nor could God plan to bring it about and do so. But
all of such actions are presupposed by, and essential to, the biblical presentation of God as a redeeming God. Hence God as presented by the biblical writers is fundamentally non-eternal. God is fundamentally in time.

As with any argument, one can here choose to deny the premises rather
than to accept the conclusion. Instead of agreeing that God is fundamentally non-eternal because God changes with respect to Gods knowledge,
Gods memory, and Gods planning, one could try to save ones conviction that God is eternal by denying that God knows what is or was or
will be occurring, that God remembers what has occurred, and that God
brings about what God has planned. It seems to me, however, that this is
clearly to give up the notion of God as a redeeming God; and in turn it
seems to me that to give this up is to give up what is central to the biblical vision of God. To sustain this latter claim would of course require an
extensive hermeneutical inquiry. But lest someone be tempted to go this
route of trying to save Gods eternity by treating all the biblical language
about God the redeemer as either false or misleadingly metaphorical, let

God everlasting

me observe that if God were eternal, God could not be the object of any
human action whatsoever.
Consider, for example, my act of referring to something, X. The event
consisting of my referring to X is a temporal event. It both begins and
ends, as do all my acts. Now the event of my referring to X is identical
with the event of Xs being referred to by me. And this event is an aspect
both of X and of me. So if X is a being that lasts longer than my act of
referring to X does, then for a while X has this aspect and for a while not.
And thus X would have succession on its time-strand. And so X would
not be eternal. Thus if God were eternal, no human being could ever
refer to God or perform any other temporal act with respect to God.
If God were eternal, one could not know God. In particular, one could
not know that God was eternal, or even believe that God was. Indeed, if
God were eternal one could not predicate of God that God is eternal. For
predicating is also a temporal act. So this is the calamitous consequence
of claiming of God that God is eternal: if one predicates of God that God
is eternal, then God is not.

I have been arguing that God as described by the biblical writers is a
being who changes. That, we have seen, is not self-evidently and obviously so, though the mode of expression of the biblical writers might lead
one to think it was. Yet it is so nonetheless. But are there not explicit
statements in the Bible to the eect that God does not change? If we are
honest to the evidence, must we not acknowledge that on this matter the
biblical writers contradict each other? Let us see.
Surprisingly, given the massive Christian theological tradition in favor
of Gods ontological immutability, there are only two passages (to the
best of my knowledge) in which it is directly said of God that God does
not change. One of these is Malachi :. The prophet has just been saying to the people that God is wearied by their hypocrisy; however (he
goes on), God will send Gods messenger to clear a path before God; and
God will take his seat, rening and purifying. As a result of this cleansing, the oerings of Judah and Jerusalem shall be pleasing to the Lord
as they were in days of old. And then comes this assurance: I am the
Lord, unchanging; and you, too, have not ceased to be sons of Jacob.

The biblical declarations are treated more fully in chapter of this volume, Unqualied divine
temporality.

Inquiring about God

From the days of your forefathers you have been wayward and have not
kept my laws. If you will return to me, I will return to you, says the Lord
of Hosts.
Surely it would be a gross misinterpretation to treat the prophet here
as claiming that God is ontologically immutable. What he says, on
the contrary, is that God is faithful to Gods people Israel that God
is unchanging in Gods delity to the covenant God has made with
them. All too often theologians have ontologized the biblical message.
Malachi : is a classic example of a passage that, cited out of context,
would seem to support the doctrine of Gods ontological immutability.
Read in context, however, it supports not that but rather the doctrine
of Gods unswerving delity. No ontological claim whatever is being
made.
The other passage in which it is said of God that God is unchanging is
found in Psalm :. Again we must set the passage in its context:
My strength is broken in mid course; the time allotted me is short.
Snatch me not away before half my days are done, for thy years last
through all generations.
Long ago thou didst lay the foundations of the earth, and the heavens
were thy handiwork.
They shall pass away, but thou endurest;
like clothes they shall all grow old;
thou shalt cast them o like a cloak, and they shall vanish;
but thou art the same and thy years shall have no end;
thy servants children shall continue,
and their posterity shall be established in thy presence.

Here, too, it would be a gross misinterpretation to regard the writer as

teaching that God is ontologically immutable. The Psalmist is making
an ontological point of sorts, though even so the ontological point is set
within a larger context of religious reection. He is drawing a contrast
between God, on the one hand, and Gods transitory creation, on the
other. And what he says about God is clearly that God is without end
Thy years shall have no end. He does not say that God is ontologically
immutable.
In short, Gods ontological immutability is not a part of the explicit
teaching of the biblical writers. What the biblical writers teach is that God
is faithful and without beginning or end, not that none of Gods aspects

Biblical quotations are from the New English Bible.

God everlasting

is temporal. The theological tradition of Gods ontological immutability

has no explicit biblical foundation.

The upshot of our discussion is this: the biblical presentation of God presupposes that God is everlasting rather than eternal. God is indeed without beginning and without end. But at least some of Gods aspects stand in
temporal-order relations to each other. Thus God, too, has a time-strand.
Gods life and existence is itself temporal. (Whether Gods life and existence always was and always will be temporal, or whether God has taken
on temporality, is a question we have not had time to consider.) Further,
the events to be found on Gods time-strand belong within the same temporal array as that which contains our time-strands. Gods aspects do not
only bear temporal-order relations to each other but to the aspects of created entities as well. And the aspects and succession of aspects to be found
on Gods time-strand are such that they constitute changes thereon. Gods
life and existence incorporates changeful succession.
Haunting Christian theology and Western philosophy throughout the
centuries has been the picture of time as bounded, with the created order
on this side of the boundary and God on the other. Or sometimes the
metaphor has been that of time as extending up to a horizon, with all
creaturely reality on this side of the horizon and God on the other. All
such metaphors, and the ways of thinking that they represent, must be
discarded. Temporality embraces us along with God.
This conclusion from our discussion turns out to be wholly in accord
with that to be found in Oscar Cullmanns Christ and Time. From his
study of the biblical words for time Cullmann concludes that, in the
biblical picture, Gods eternity is not qualitatively dierent from our
temporality. Cullmanns line of argument (though not his conclusion)
has been vigorously attacked by James Barr on the ground that from
the lexicographical patterns of biblical language we cannot legitimately
make inferences as to what was being said by way of that language.
Verbal similarities may conceal dierences in thought, and similarities in

I am that I am (Exod. :) has also sometimes been used to support the doctrine of Gods
immutability. However, this is one of the most cryptic passages in all of Scripture; and to
understate the point it is not in the least clear that what is being proclaimed is Gods ontological immutability. There is a wealth of exegetical material on the passage, but see especially the
comments by J. C. Murray, The Problem of God (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ),
ch. .
Biblical Words for Time (London: SCM, ).

Inquiring about God

thought may be clothed with verbal dierences. Barrs objection is apropos. But though we have traveled a very dierent route from Cullmanns
we have come out at the same place. We have not engaged in any word
studies. Yet, by seeing that Gods temporality is presupposed by the biblical presentation of God as redeemer, we too have reached the conclusion
that we share time with God. The lexicographical and philosophical cases
coincide in their results.
Though God is within time, yet God is Lord of time. The whole array
of contingent temporal events is within Gods power. God is Lord of
what occurs. And that, along with the specic pattern of what God does,
grounds all authentically biblical worship of, and obedience to, God. It is
not because God is outside of time eternal, immutable, impassive that
we are to worship and obey God. It is because of what God can and does
bring about within time that we mortals are to render God praise and
obedience.

Unqualied divine temporality

God is presented in Scripture as One who has a history of acting and

responding. Recall Exodus . When Moses was tending the ocks of
his father-in-law in the wilderness, his curiosity was piqued one day by
a bush engulfed in ames but not consumed. He walked over; and as he
approached, God addressed him out of the bush: Moses, Moses! Its
the narrator who tells us that it was God addressing him; Moses didnt
yet know what to make of what was happening. Moses responded,
Here I am, whereupon God said, Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy
ground. Then the speaker in the bush identied himself. I am the
God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the
God of Jacob. Moses was gripped by fear and, no longer daring to
look, covered his face.
God then told Moses that he, God, had seen the aiction of his people, had heard their cry of suering, and had come down to bring them
out of servitude into a land where they could ourish. So come, said
God, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out
of Egypt.
What then follows is a series of protests by Moses. Who am I that I
should go to Pharaoh and lead my people out? Ill be with you, says God.
But if I tell my people that the God of their fathers has sent me to lead them
out, they ll want to know your name. Tell them that I AM WHO I AM,
says God. But they wont believe me when I tell them that you appeared and
spoke to me. Ill enable you to perform a couple of wonders as signs, says
God. But Im a poor speaker. Ill give you the right words when theyre
needed, says God. But I dont want to do it; pick somebody else. No, says
God, exasperated now, youre the one. Ill appoint your brother Aaron to
speak for you in public; but you are to be the leader.

All Scriptural quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard translation.

Inquiring about God

This episode stands out as one of the great numinous episodes of the biblical narrative. But its representation of God as having a history that can
be narrated is not exceptional but typical of Scriptures presentation of
God: God responds to what transpires in human aairs by performing
a succession of actions, including actions of speaking. An implication of
this presentation of God is that theres change in Gods life; if a person
does one thing at one time and a dierent thing at a later time, then
theres change in that persons life. Behind the change in action there
is, in turn, a change in knowledge: Gods successive responses to Moses
were motivated by Gods knowledge, each time, of Moses new protest;
the changes in Gods knowledge tracked the changes in Moses protest.
These, I say, are implications of how Scripture presents God: God has a
history, and in this history there are changes in Gods actions, responses,
and knowledge. The God of Scripture is One of whom a narrative can be
told; we know that not because Scripture tells us that but because it oers
such a narrative. I hold that an implication of this is that God is in time.
If something has a history, then perforce that being is in time.
Let me articulate a hermeneutical principle that I have just now been
employing and will continue to employ: an implication of accepting
Scripture as canonical is that one will arm as literally true Scriptures
presentation of God unless one has good reason not to do so.
I have two reasons for arming this principle. In the rst place, I hold
that the fundamental principle with which we all operate in our interpretation of all discourse is that the discourser is to be taken as speaking
literally unless we have good reason, in a given case, to conclude that she
is not doing so. To speak literally is to say what ones sentence means in
the language. Taking the discourser as speaking literally is the default
option; the alternative, taking her as not speaking literally, has to bear
the burden of proof if it is to be accepted. If she says, Its late, then I
interpret her as speaking literally, saying what the sentence means in the
language, that its late unless I have good reason to think that she was
not on this occasion speaking literally. If it were always completely up
for grabs whether a person was speaking literally, metaphorically, ironically, and so forth, ones interpretation of ones fellows could never get
o the ground.

I defend the principle at much greater length in chapters of my Divine Discourse (Cambridge
University Press, ).

Unqualied divine temporality

My second consideration pertains specically to the interpretation of

Scripture by those who take it as canonical. In a well-known passage in
De Doctrina Christiana, Augustine remarked that we must show the way
to nd out whether a phrase is literal or gurative. And the way is certainly as follows: Whatever there is in the word of God that cannot, when
taken literally, be referred either to purity of life or soundness of doctrine,
you may set down as gurative. Purity of life has reference to the love of
God and ones neighbor; soundness of doctrine to the knowledge of God
and ones neighbor.
Augustine is here clearly taking for granted that the literal interpretation is what I called, above, the default option, and saying that when it
comes to interpreting what Scripture says about God, we are to interpret
the words literally unless doing so cannot be referred either to purity of
life or soundness of doctrine. If the literal interpretation conicts with
purity of life or soundness of doctrine, then that is a good reason for not
interpreting literally.
I do not propose trying to list the sorts of reasons that I myself would
regard as good reasons for not construing some biblical presentation of
God literally. Thats because I do not have, and do not want to have,
any a priori typology. I am open to considering on its merits each reason
oered. It is my view, however, that Augustines two principles, if not
exhaustive, are at least fundamental.
The hermeneutic principle that I have enunciated, when conjoined
with the point that God is presented in Scripture as having a history, has
the consequence that, for Christians, the burden of proof is on those who
hold that God is outside of time on those who hold that God is timeless, eternal.
Until the past century, the Christian theological tradition has so massively armed the eternity of God that many assume that the burden of
proof lies rather on those who hold that the biblical presentation of God,
as One who has a history that can be narrated, is not to be taken as the
literal truth of the matter. But not so. The massiveness of the tradition has
not shifted the burden of proof; what it does instead is place on those of
us who disagree with the theological tradition a weighty obligation. We
are obligated to understand as deeply and sympathetically as we can the
considerations oered by our predecessors in favor of Gods eternity, placing ourselves open to the possibility that they have discovered decisive

III, .. I am using the translation of J. F. Shaw in Philip Scha, ed., The Nicene and PostNicene Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, reprint).

Inquiring about God

considerations in favor of their position. But the burden of proof remains

on them. They are claiming that we should not accept as literally true this
aspect of the biblical presentation of God; for that we need cogent arguments. Otherwise whats left of the churchs confession that Scripture, for
it, is canonical?

But am I not being tendentiously selective? Granted that Scripture
presents God as having a narratable history of acting and responding; are
there not also Scriptural passages that tell us that God is immutable and
timeless? I think not with one possible exception. If there were such
passages, we would then be faced with the question whether or not to
take these passages as literally true; it would not just automatically follow
from the presence of such passages that the all-pervasive biblical picture
of God as having a history of acting and responding has to be interpreted
as gurative. But I think that there are no such passages with, as I say,
one possible exception.
Begin with those that have traditionally been cited in support of Gods
timelessness all together an exceedingly small number, I might add; and
rather than making a complete survey, lets conne our attention to those
that the writers who cite these passages would regard as the weightiest.
One is Psalm :
Lord, you have been our dwelling place
in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to
everlasting you are God.
You turn us back to dust,
and say, Turn back, you mortals. For a thousand years in your sight
are like yesterday when it is past,
or like a watch in the night. (Ps :)

One is amazed that this passage would ever have been cited in support of divine timelessness. What it says on the face of it is not that
God is timeless but that God existed before creation, indeed from everlasting to everlasting. How could God exist before creation and yet be
timeless? The writer adds that, as God sees things, a long time is, in
retrospect, like a day, or like a night watch. Rather than supporting
divine timelessness this seems, if anything, to do the opposite. When
God looks back over a thousand years they seem, to God, to have lasted

Unqualied divine temporality

no longer than a day or a night: evidently there is a felt temporality in

Gods experience.
We nd a variant on this last point in the New Testament passage,
With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are
like one day ( Pet :). Given the use of temporal language to describe
Gods experience, it again amazes one that this passage should ever have
been cited in support of eternity. What it says, on the face of it, is that,
with God, experiential duration does not match up with clock time.
Lastly, consider Jesus declaration in John :, Before Abraham was,
I am. Jesus is here taking onto himself Gods self-given name, I AM;
but rather than arming thereby that God is outside of time, he tacitly
does the opposite. If I AM existed before Abraham, how could I AM be
timeless?
The conclusion is inescapable: the Scriptural passages traditionally cited
as supporting divine timelessness provide no such support whatsoever.

The three passages traditionally cited in support of Gods immutability
have more going for them, on the face of it, than those traditionally cited
in favor of Gods timelessness. When one considers what the writers were
likely to have been saying with their words, however, at least two of them
prove quite obviously not to be arming ontological immutability.
Begin with Malachi :: For I the LORD do not change. To discern
what the writer would have been saying we do not, in this case, have to
go outside the text of Malachi into the ambient culture; all we need
do is consider the passage in context. The prophet has just been saying
to his listeners that God is wearied by all their talk. Nonetheless God,
after sending a messenger to prepare the way, will purify and rene
Gods people, like a rener and purier of silver. When that has been
accomplished, the oerings of Judah and Jerusalem will once again be
pleasing to the Lord, as they were in the days of old. Then comes this
wonderful assurance: For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O
children of Jacob, have not perished. Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them.
Return to me, and I will return to you (vv. ). Surely the prophet is
not here arming Gods ontological immutability but instead saying
that Gods delity to the covenant God has made with Gods people
remains unalterable. The passage arms covenantal delity, not ontological immutability.

Inquiring about God

Consider next the armation of the psalmist, addressed to God in

Psalm :, that you are the same. Again, rather than taking this passage in isolation and then allowing it to stimulate our ontological imaginations, lets try to discern what the writer was saying. For this it will
once again be sucient to consider the context. Lets have before us some
of the preceding verses, along with the one following:
He has broken my strength in midcourse; he has shortened my days.
O my God, I say, do not take me away at the midpoint of my life,
you whose years endure throughout all generations.
Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are
the work of your hands. They will perish, but you endure;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You change them like clothing, and they pass away; but you are the
same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants
shall live secure;
their ospring shall be established in your presence. (Ps :)

The writer is indeed making an ontological or perhaps better, a cosmological point; but that point is not ontological immutability. Whereas
Gods creation is transitory, God abides. For God, unlike the creature,
does not wear out; Gods years are without end. What the writer says is
not that God is ontologically immutable but that God is everlasting; God
endures. God has years, indeed, but to those years there is no end.
The passage most plausibly cited in support of Gods ontological immutability is no doubt James :, in which it is said that with God there is
no variation or shadow due to change. Lets have before us the preceding
verse along with the verse following:
Do not be deceived, my beloved. Every generous act of giving, with every perfect
gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is
no variation or shadow due to change. In fulllment of his own purpose he gave
us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of rst fruits of
his creatures. (Jas :)

In place of no variation or shadow due to change some ancient manuscripts say, no variation due to a shadow of turning. Probably that doesnt
make any dierence. The writer appears to be working with the image of
a beam of light shining on a rotating object, dierent parts of the object
falling into shadow as the object rotates. God, he says, is not like such
an object; God is like the light. The writer has just told his readers that
when they are tempted to do evil, they must not ascribe that temptation
to God; God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one

Unqualied divine temporality

(Jas :). God is the source only of what is good God is the sole source
of good. In that respect God is like a source of light in which there is no
variation or shadow due to change.
Is the writer of James here arming Gods ontological immutability?
I think the most we can say is that though its possible hes doing that,
its not likely. Its likely that what hes saying is that God is unchangeable
in that God is never the source of evil, only and always of good which
falls far short of arming ontological immutability. Yet the context does
not entitle one to dismiss entirely the possibility that the writer was alluding to Gods ontological immutability. That would go beyond what his
argument required, yet he might nonetheless have been alluding to it as
grounding his argument. But if these considerations are correct though
its not likely that the writer was alluding to ontological immutability,
the possibility that he was doing so cannot be decisively dismissed then
obviously this passage cannot be used as a proof text for Gods ontological immutability.
I conclude that the situation for Gods ontological immutability is like
that for Gods timelessness: there are no passages in Scripture that can be
cited as supporting the doctrine.

Whether or not we should take Scripture as literally true in its presentation of God as having a narratable history depends, I said, on whether we
have good reasons for not so taking it; the burden of proof, for Christians,
lies on those who think it should not be so taken. We will want to take
note of the reasons that have been oered. But I propose spending the
bulk of my time developing some arguments of my own in support of
the view that God does have a history, and that God, accordingly, is not
timeless everlasting, and necessarily so, but not eternal. If these arguments are cogent, the eect will be that we will know in advance that the
burden of proof will be impossible to bear or to speak more modestly,
that it will be extremely dicult to bear.
My strategy will be rst to oer some reections on the nature of time,
then to move on to consider what it would be for something to be outside
of time; and then nally to use the results of these inquiries to show why
God cannot be outside of time.
It will be asked where I propose to get the knowledge of God to which
I will be appealing at that last point of the argument. My answer is: I will
be getting it from Scripture; I will be appealing to what we learn about

Inquiring about God

God from Scripture. I make no pretense of constructing a piece of natural

theology.
But then whats the point? We have already learned that Scripture
presents God as having a history, from which it is to be concluded that
God is not timeless. Why plunge into philosophical reections on time
to establish that God is not timeless when the understanding of God that
will be employed in the argument is the understanding presented to us in
Scripture? The only thing relevant is a scrutiny of the arguments of those
who claim to be able to bear the burden of proof against taking as literally true Scriptures representation of God as having a history.
Let me say again that the reections on time that follow will not be
used to construct an argument independent of Scripture for the conclusion that God is everlasting but not eternal. Their relevance is rather that
we will emerge with a deeper understanding of the implications of the
biblical presentation of God as having a history. Or to put it the other
way round: we will emerge with a deeper understanding of how much of
the biblical presentation of God has to be given up if one holds that God
is timeless. The discussion will be a specimen of the Anselmian project
of faith seeking understanding: the believer seeking to understand something of the why of what already he or she believes.
Early in the twentieth century the English philosopher J. M. E.
McTaggart made an important advance in our understanding of time by
explicitly distinguishing two dierent ways in which events are ordered
within time. Everybody non-philosophers and philosophers alike
operated with these two systems of ordering before McTaggart came
along; however, it is generally agreed that to McTaggart belongs the honor
of rst having explicitly and emphatically distinguished them.
All events are ordered in terms of some happening now, some having
happened in the more or less distant past, and some going to happen in
the more or less distant future; likewise all pairs of events are ordered in
terms of one member of the pair preceding the other or being simultaneous with the other. McTaggart called these two orderings the A-series and
the B-series, respectively. Of course there are overlaps in both series: a given
event may be partly over, partly happening right now, and partly still to
come; and one event may partly precede another and partly be simultaneous with it. Such overlaps wont make any dierence to the truth of what
I want to say in the following; accordingly, I will make things easier for

J. M. E. McTaggart, The Nature of Existence, vol. II (Cambridge University Press, ).

Unqualied divine temporality

ourselves by talking as if there were none. Taking explicit account of the

overlaps would require needless complications in formulation.
McTaggart himself believed that time was not real; the A-series and the
B-series alike are nothing more than features of the merely apparent temporality of reality. Few have followed McTaggart on this point; on this
occasion I will have to forgo scrutinizing his argument and showing why
I too do not regard it as cogent. The discussion in recent years has focused
instead on whether the A-series is an objective feature of time. No one
disputes that the ordering of events in the B-series is objectively real; the
issue under discussion is whether the distinction between past, present,
and future marks a dierence in ontological status of events.
What would be the alternative? Well, consider the spatial concepts of
here and there. Nobody supposes that these mark a distinction in objective space; nobody supposes that some areas of space have hereness and
the others have thereness. The fact that for each of us, at any time, some
areas of space are here and the others are there is merely a consequence of
the fact that each of us has a location in space, by virtue of having bodies. Here is simply where I am. For bodiless angels theres no here and no
there.
Perhaps past, present, and future are like that. Just as each of us has a
location in space, by virtue of each having a body and those bodies having a location, so also each of our actions and responses has a location in
time that is, in the B-series. Perhaps the present is simply the location
in time of my act of writing down these words, and of whatever else is
simultaneous with that. The past would then be whatever precedes that,
and the future whatever succeeds it. Its only because there are selves having bodies with spatial locations that the concepts of here and there have
applicability; perhaps its only because there are agents whose actions and
reactions have locations in the B-series that the concepts of past, present,
and future have applicability.
The thesis that the A-series is not objectively real has come to be called
the tenseless theory of time; the view that it is objectively real is called the
tense theory. I am an adherent of the tense theory. Let me give some of my
reasons.
To get going, lets have before us the outlines of the two very dierent
pictures of time that the theorists of these two views embrace.
Start with the tense theory. The account sometimes given of the tense
theory usually by those who do not hold it is that the past, the present,
and the future are properties that events possess for a while and then lack.
Every event that appears in the B-series is such that for a certain stretch of

Inquiring about God

time in that series it has the property of being future while lacking those
of being present and of being past; then at a certain time in the B-series
it loses the property of being future and gains that of being present while
continuing to lack the property of being past; then it loses that property
and ever after has the property of being past while lacking that of being
present or being future.
Whats wrong with this picture, as the tense theorist sees things, is that
it treats past, present, and future as properties of events and regards the
three properties as equal in status. In fact the present is basic, in the following way. Whats fundamental in time is the occurrence of events this
for the most part having nothing to do with your and my temporal relationship to those events. When an event occurs, thats when its present;
being present at t and occurring at t come to the same thing. Its only
because an event occurs and it cant occur without occurring at some
time that it has a location anywhere in the B-series. If its now past,
thats because its occurring is now sometime in the past. Theres no other
way for it to get into the past than that way. Its occurring is now over.
What remains now is the fact that it did occur. But the fact that it did occur
is very dierent from its occurring. The distinction between present, past,
and future marks a dierence in the ontological status of events; and of
these, the status of the present is basic.
Does an event that occurred still exist when it is past? That depends on
what one means by the question. If one means, Does that event continue
to occur? the answer is of course, no; its occurring is over. If one means,
Can that event be a component of various facts pre-eminently of the fact
that it is past and can we refer to it? the answer is, yes. If one chooses to
use exist so that a sucient condition of somethings now existing is that
it is now a component of facts and can be referred to, then past events
exist.
What about the future? Are future events likewise components of facts,
and can we refer to them? Tense theorists divide on this point. My own
view, which I wont here defend since it wont make any dierence in what
follows, is that only when an event is occurring or has occurred can it be a
component of facts and can it be referred to. There are lots of general facts
about the future, but no facts having particular events as constituents.
Now for the picture with which the tenseless theorist operates: things
and events are spread throughout B-series time as they are throughout
space, and no event in the series diers from another in ontological status, nor does any event ever change its ontological status. Those whose
date is have exactly the same status as those whose date is and

Unqualied divine temporality

as those whose date is (this last being when this present essay is being
written); and of no event is it the case that at a certain time it has the
ontological status of occurring and then at a later time the dierent ontological status of having occurred after having been nowhere present in
the B-series before it occurred.
Past, present, and future enter the picture when agents who do things
at times (in the B-series) enter the picture. We all use two distinct ways of
specifying the positions of events in the B-series. One consists of picking
out some event and then specifying the temporal position of everything
else by reference to that event: the letter arrived a week after he mailed it.
In addition to ad hoc employments of this strategy, we now have a universal system, consisting in part of taking the birth of Christ as the universal
reference point and locating all other events by reference to that one; as in,
for example, the stock market crashed in AD . The other is the indexical
strategy. We specify the location of events in terms of their relation to the
location of whats now; for example, the stock market crashed seventy years
ago. The distinction between past, present, and future has no ontological signicance. When I say, The kettle is whistling now, I am making
no claim concerning the ontological status of the kettles whistling; I am
simply relating the kettles whistling to my act of saying that its whistling.
What I say is true if the kettles whistling is simultaneous with my act of
saying that its whistling if it occurs at the same date. Correspondingly,
its whistling is in the past if it precedes my act of saying, and its in the
future if it follows my act of saying.
Now for some of my reasons for holding that the tenseless theory is
untenable: most of the discussion of these matters over the past fty years
or so has been conducted in terms of language, propositions, speech acts,
truth and meaning. Early on it was the contention of the tenseless theorists that any proposition asserted by assertively uttering a tensed sentence
on some date could equally well be asserted with a tenseless sentence in
which one specied that date. For example, the proposition I assert by
assertively uttering in the tensed sentence The stock market crashed
seventy years ago could equally well have been asserted by uttering the
dated tenseless sentence The stock market crashes seventy years before
.
Suppose this claim were true; its not obvious what ontological conclusion should be drawn. The proposition asserted can be expressed with
either a tensed date-free sentence or a tenseless dated sentence; how do we
get from that to the conclusion of the tenseless theorist that the only facts
are tenseless facts B-series facts? Be that as it may, however, I argued in an

Inquiring about God

earlier essay on these matters that the claim is mistaken. The proposition
asserted in the one case is not identical with that asserted in the other;
they have dierent entailments. What I say in assertively uttering The
stock market crashed seventy years ago entails nothing at all about the
date of the crash; what I say in assertively uttering The stock market
crashes in entails nothing at all about how long ago that was.
The tenseless theorist D. H. Mellor in eect concedes this point in
e ect, since he conducts his discussion in terms of the meaning of sentences rather than the identity of propositions: he concedes that a datefree tensed sentence does not mean the same as any dated tense-free
sentence. To this he adds the important point that tensed sentences are
indispensable in human aairs. Having conceded that no dated tense-free
sentence is identical in meaning with a date-free tensed sentence, some
tenseless theorist might think to handle the problem in procrustean fashion by proposing to abolish sentences of the latter sort; since they cannot
be reduced to tenseless sentences, get rid of them. We cannot, Mellor
argues; for we cannot do without that indexical system of temporal reference. The alternative non-indexical system is not sucient.
This leads Mellor to propose, in place of the claim by earlier tenseless theorists about identity of meaning of sentences, a claim about truth
conditions for tensed sentences. To understand his claim, we must have in
hand the distinction between a sentence, on the one hand, and utterances
and inscriptions of that sentence, on the other. Mellor marks the distinction with the now-familiar terminology rst introduced by C. S. Peirce,
type and token. The sentence as such is a type; utterances and inscriptions of the type are tokens. The account of the truth conditions for tense
that Mellor oers is a thesis concerning the truth conditions of tokens
of tensed sentences. More specically, since the statement of conditions
mentions the token, it is a token-reexive account. More specically yet,
it is, as one would expect, a tenseless token-reexive account. For tokens of
present-tense sentences, the account goes as follows:
Any token T of E is occurring now is true if and only if E occurs simultaneously with T.

The thought is this: from the set of all sentence-tokens that ever exist
and which are of the form, E is occurring now (where E stands in for a
designation of some event), pick any one you wish; that token will be true

In God everlasting, chapter in this present collection.

D. H. Mellor, Real Time (Cambridge University Press, ).

Unqualied divine temporality

just in case the event designated occurs simultaneously with at the same
time in the B-series as the token. (Occurs is to be understood as tenseless.) The reader can easily gure out for herself the corresponding truth
conditions for tokens of past-tense and of future-tense sentences.
The criterion oered seems to me denitely correct; lets not spend time
worrying the matter. The question to consider is what signicance that
has. There is an a priori reason for expecting that it wont have much.
Sentences of vastly dierent meaning, and propositions of vastly dierent content, often have the same truth conditions. Take the proposition
Its an animal if a cat, and the proposition + = ; their truth conditions
are exactly the same: theyre both true in all possible worlds. Hence the
sentence Its an animal if a cat is true if and only if + = .
But lets go beyond a priori considerations to look at the case before
us. Notice, in the rst place, that the criterion for the truth of the token
entails the existence of the token; the token T cannot occur simultaneously with the event E unless T exists. That the criterion should have this
entailment seems correct. Mellor takes sentence-tokens to be the bearers
of truth and falsehood; and a condition of some bearer of truth and falsehood being true is that the bearer exist. In this regard, the criterion proposed by Mellor is a denite improvement over one proposed around the
same time by J. J. C. Smart. Smarts account has come to be called the
tenseless date theory (compared to Mellors tenseless token-reexive
theory). For present-tense tokens, Smarts account goes like this:
Any token T of E is occurring now, uttered or inscribed at time t, is true if and
only if E occurs at t.

Smarts criterion is not sucient for the truth of the token; whats needed
is not just that the event referred to occur at the time the token was
uttered or inscribed, but also that there be that token at that time.
Back then to Mellors proposal. Notice that the very thing that makes
it satisfactory as a necessary and sucient condition for the truth of a
tensed sentence-token that it entails the existence of the token makes
it unsatisfactory as a specication of the meaning of the sentence, and
unsatisfactory as a specication of the content of the proposition asserted
by the assertive utterance of the sentence. When I assertively utter a sentence of the form E is occurring now, I am making no claim whatsoever about my act of assertively uttering the sentence, nor about the

J. J. C. Smart, Time and Becoming, in Peter van Inwagen, ed., Time and Cause: Essays Presented
to Richard Taylor (Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, ), .

Inquiring about God

sentence-token I have thereby produced. Suppose I assertively utter, The

twentieth century is about to end. In doing so I make no claim whatsoever about my act of utterance nor about the token produced. The truth
of what I say is independent of the existence of my act of utterance and
of the token I produce this in spite of the fact a condition of that tokens
being true is that there be that token. But surely what we require from the
tenseless theorist is some account of what were saying when we use the
language of tense a tenseless account! Truth conditions do not give us
that account.
There is an additional diculty that is more indicative of what is
wrong with the tenseless theory. The situation considered thus far
involves picking out some token of a tensed sentence and determining
whether its truth condition is satised. Consider now the circumstance
of resolving to do something when some time or event comes around.
One of Mellors examples will do nicely: resolving to turn on the radio
to hear the one oclock news. To enact this resolution I must turn on the
radio when I believe that it is now one oclock. How do I determine that,
on the tenseless account? Well, says the tenseless theorist, see to it that
your act of turning it on is simultaneous with the event of its becoming
one oclock. Well, yes. But twice a day every day it becomes one oclock;
with which of that multitude of events am I to make my act of turning
on the radio simultaneous? And come to think of it, there are also many
acts of my turning on this radio, spread out across time. If I somehow
come to know which of all those events of its becoming one oclock is of
concern to me, then I still have to know which of all my acts of turning
on this radio I am to make simultaneous with that event of its becoming
one oclock.
Of course the answer is that its this present event of its becoming one
oclock that is of concern to me, and this present act of my turning on
the radio. To operate the indexical system of temporal reference I have to
be able to determine which date is now or which events are happening
now. All the references that the system enables are ultimately related to
that. The tenseless theorist, for whom all dates and events have exactly the
same ontological status, has no way of accounting for how we make that
determination. If all events of its becoming one oclock, and all acts of my
turning on this radio, have exactly the same ontological status, how do I
get started in implementing my decision that my present act of turning
on this radio shall coincide with this present event of its becoming one
oclock (alternatively: with this present event of the beginning of the one
oclock news)?

Unqualied divine temporality

Mellor rightly recognizes that the acceptability of his tenseless tokenreexive account of the truth conditions for tensed sentence-tokens does
not, by itself, imply that the A-series is not an objective dimension of
time; accordingly, after articulating his account of truth conditions he
goes on to oer an argument for the non-objectivity of tense by adapting
McTaggarts argument for the non-reality of time in general. The argument seems to me fallacious. I judge that on this occasion I can forgo
showing that, however, since we already have good reason for concluding that the basic thesis of the tenseless theorist, that tense supervenes on
our operation of the indexical system for specifying temporal location,
cannot be sustained. Rather than tense supervening on our operation of
the system, we cannot operate the system without being able to pick out
those events and dates that have the unique ontological status of occurring now. Knowing which events occur simultaneously with which falls
short of knowing which ones are occurring now.

What would it be for something to be outside of time timeless, eternal?
Best to begin with what it is for something to be within time. Events
are obviously within time. They are that by virtue of occurring within
a period (or moment) of time, hence of beginning at a time and of ending at a time; if they endure, they are also within time by virtue of being
half over at a certain time, a quarter over, and so forth. And if there are
changes within the event, then the event is also within time by virtue of
the lapse of time between the two termini of the change.
The situation for things other than events substances, such as human
beings, animals and plants; properties, such as being quizzical and being
smart ; numbers; and so on is dierent. Such entities, though many of
them have spatial parts, do not have temporal parts. Only a small part of
that rather long event that is Bill Clintons occupancy of the oce of US
president is occurring today; by contrast, our fourteen-year-old cat is all
here right now; hes not mostly over, not more than half gone.
In many cases the signicance of this dierence between events and
non-events is considerably diminished by virtue of the fact that for many
non-events there is the history or biography of that entity; and the history
or biography of an entity is a complex event. Our cat has a history. That
history began at a certain time and will end at a certain time; and since
fourteen is already rather old for a cat, his history is by now well more
than half over. Furthermore, over the years there have been a lot of new

Inquiring about God

developments in that history. In short, a story could be told about our cat;
a narrative of its history could be composed.
But theres no story to be told about numbers, no narrative to be composed. Thats because numbers have no history. They neither come into
existence nor go out; nor do they change. For some numbers it happens
that they are discovered at a certain time; but the event of a numbers discovery is an item in the history of its discoverer, not in the history of the
number. Its discovery makes no dierence to the number; it represents no
change in it.
When it comes to non-events I propose that we take whether or not
something has a history as the determinant of whether or not it is in time.
What brings it about that you and I are in time? The fact that we each
have a history, the fact that about each of us theres a story that can be
told, a narrative that can be composed. What brings it about that numbers are not in time that they are timeless? The fact that none has a
history.

So our main question is this: Does God have a history? Is there a story
to be told about God, a narrative to be composed? Theres nothing to be
narrated about Gods coming into or going out of existence, since, as we
all agree, God doesnt come into or go out of existence, necessarily so. The
question comes down to whether theres a history of Gods actions and
responses, and of the knowledge that lies behind those. Is there a story to
be told about Gods actions, about Gods responses to what transpires in
Gods creation, and about the ow of Gods knowledge that lies behind
those?

One might hold that something is (or was or will be) in time if its ever true to say of it that it
now exists. Then the theist will perforce be committed to the view that God is in time. For the
theist holds that God exists. And by exists I dont see that one ever has any option but to mean
presently exists or did and does and will exist, or does or did or will exist. In general,
our verbs have no truly tenseless sense. The so-called tenseless sense is really the disjunctive
sense: does or did or will. My reason for not using the criterion cited just above for determining whether God is in time has to do with the central reason that the tradition oered for
holding that God is timeless. Th at reason is that God must be understood as changeless. It is
Gods ontological immutability that was of central concern. It appears to me that Anselm did
interpret Gods timelessness so rigorously that one cannot even say God presently exists. But
I fail to see that he oers any other reason for concluding that God is timeless than that God
does not in any way change; and surely it would be a mistake to conclude that numbers, for
example, change just because we can say of some number that it presently exists, and did, and
will exist.

Unqualied divine temporality

Scripture oers us such a narrative. I took note of a small bit of it at the

beginning of our discussion: after hearing the Hebrews cry of suering,
God addressed Moses out of an unburnt aming bush and, upon being
asked for his name, told Moses that he was to be called I AM.
Those who hold that God is timeless agree, of course, that Scripture
oers us this narrative. They deny, nevertheless, that God has a history.
Not only does God not come into or go out of existence, there are also
no changes in God: no alterations in action, response, or knowledge. The
biblical narrative is not to be interpreted as presenting items in Gods
history; it is to be interpreted as presenting items in human history. The
analogue to numbers is helpful: what appears at rst sight to be a history
of numbers is in fact a history of human beings dealing with numbers.
Everybody in the orthodox Christian tradition would agree, however,
that for the purposes at hand there are some absolutely decisive dierences
between God and numbers. For our purposes the most important dierences to note are that whereas God acts, numbers do not; and whereas
God has knowledge, numbers do not.
If one concedes that God acts, how can one nevertheless hold that God
has no history, and that the narrative of Gods actions presented to us in
Scripture cannot be interpreted as a narrative of Gods history? The classic
solution to this puzzle was articulated by Thomas Aquinas in the following passage:
Nor, if the action of the rst agent is eternal, does it follow that His eect is eternal God acts voluntarily in the production of things Gods act of understanding and willing is, necessarily, His act of making. Now, an eect follows
from the intellect and the will according to the determination of the intellect
and the command of the will. Moreover, just as the intellect determines every
other condition of the thing made, so does it prescribe the time of its making;
for art determines not only that this thing is to be such and such, but that it is
to be at this particular time, even as a physician determines that a dose of medicine is to be drunk at such and such a particular time, so that, if his act of will
were of itself sucient to produce the eect, the eect would follow anew from
his previous decision, without any new action on his part. Nothing, therefore,
prevents our saying that Gods action existed from all eternity, whereas its eect
was not present from eternity, but existed at that time when, from all eternity,
He ordained it.

The core of the point Aquinas is making is that one must distinguish
between (a) the time at which one enacts ones decision to do whats

Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles , ; cf. , a. I use the translation of the English
Dominicans (New York: Benzinger Brothers, ).

Inquiring about God

necessary to make something happen and (b) the time at which, so one
has decided, it shall happen. I think there are better analogies to illustrate
the point than the one Aquinas oers. Most of us will remember those
toys from childhood in which one releases a marble at the top of the toy
and the marble then descends through a series of loops, springs, trapdoors
and the like, until fteen seconds or so later it emerges at the bottom.
Perhaps I am especially fond of that sequence in which the marble opens
the trapdoor, falls through it, hits the spring and is tossed up into the air.
In order to make that happen, I release the marble at the top at a certain
moment; no further decisions are required on my part. Nonetheless, its
not until ve seconds after I release the marble that it opens the trapdoor,
and not until three seconds later is it tossed up into the air. Perhaps I also
decide that it shall be tossed up into the air at the very moment that the
clock in the hall begins to strike noon. Then I release the marble precisely
eight seconds before the time at which, so I calculate, the clock will begin
to strike. And thats all I do; in particular, I dont do anything in addition
at noon.
Its along these lines, so Aquinas suggests, that we should think of
Gods action. From the fact that God decided to bring about a sequence
of two events it does not follow that God rst enacted the decision to
bring about the earlier event and then enacted the decision to bring about
the later. For any pair of events that God decided to bring about, no matter how separated in time those events may be, Gods enactment of the
decision to bring about one of them is simultaneous with his enactment
of the decision to bring about the other. The temporal sequence is entirely
in the events, not at all in God.
To which the only thing to be added is that theres no such thing as the
time before God made the decision and no such thing as the time after
God made the decision; were that the case, God would after all have a history. What separates the position of traditional orthodox Christian theology from deism is the insistence, on the part of the former, that theres no
time at which God is not yet enacting the decision, nor any at which God
is no longer enacting it. The deist holds that God made the decision and
ever since then has watched it play out.
An implication of the traditional orthodox position is that none of
Gods actions is a response to what we human beings do; indeed, not only
is none of Gods actions a response to what we do; nothing at all in Gods
life is a response to what occurs among Gods creatures.
Why is that? The traditional theologians had a number of reasons for
holding that there is nothing in God that is a response, chief among them

Unqualied divine temporality

their conviction that responsiveness on Gods part would compromise

Gods aseity, Gods unconditionedness. For our purposes theres another
reason thats more relevant, however. Responsiveness would require tensed
knowledge on Gods part; and were God to have tensed knowledge of
what happens in human aairs, God would perforce have a history.
One responds to something upon knowing that it is happening, or has
happened or is about to happen. I hold my excitement over its turning a
new millennium until I see that it is turning a new millennium; Im saddened by my mothers death upon learning that it has happened. If all I
know about the time of my mothers death is tenseless facts B-series
facts then I dont grieve, because I dont know whether her death has yet
happened. Likewise if all I know about the event of its turning a new millennium is tenseless facts, then I dont cheer, because again I dont know
whether the event has yet happened. Earlier we saw that enacting the
decision to act when it becomes a certain time, or when a certain event
happens, requires knowledge (or belief) of tensed facts. In their relationship to time, theres a deep similarity between response and such action.
But if God has no history, then God lacks tensed knowledge. For one
can know that something is presently happening only when it is; the
knowledge that some event is occurring can occur only when that event
itself is occurring. The endurance of the knowledge exactly tracks the
endurance of the event. So if God has knowledge of present-tensed facts,
then theres change in Gods knowledge as indeed there is if God has
knowledge of past-tensed facts and future-tensed facts. Since those facts
come and go, Gods knowledge of them comes and goes. Thats why, if
God has knowledge of tensed facts, God has a history; theres a story to
be told about Gods knowledge.
Let me place in center stage the implication, just noticed, of the claim
that God has no history and is accordingly out of time, eternal: were God
eternal, Gods knowledge would be extremely constricted in scope. Of no
tensed fact would God have any knowledge; God would not have knowledge of any A-series facts, only of B-series facts. As a consequence, God
could neither respond to what transpires in the world nor enact the decision to act at a certain time. If God were eternal, Gods action would have
to be entirely non-interventionist.
Contrast this with how Scripture presents God. When Moses asks to
be given Gods name, God knows that Moses is doing so knows not
just the tenseless fact that Moses at some time or other asks for the name,
but the tensed fact that Moses is presently asking for the name. Hence it
is that God can now respond, and does now respond, by now giving the

Inquiring about God

name; God intervenes. If all God knew was the tenseless fact that Moses
at some time or other asks for the name, then God wouldnt know when
to oer the name.
In place of this biblical presentation of God as responding and intervening, those who hold that God is eternal think of God as considering in advance all the possibilities and acting accordingly all of this
being timeless. A variation on the childs toy I asked us to imagine earlier
may be helpful. Suppose there are various paths that the marble can take,
depending on where exactly I release it. But the possibility of monitoring
the progress of the marble and then, depending on what I think about it,
intervening at certain points opening or not opening a trapdoor at a certain bend is not open to me. So what do I do in forming my decision as
to where to release the marble? Lets add this is important that neither
I nor anyone else has ever yet released a marble in this apparatus, or any
like it. Well, what I do is gure out which path the marble would follow
for each position of release, and then evaluate those paths. That is, I gure
out the relevant counterfactuals, and I make my appraisals. If I released
the marble here it would follow path A; and though that has a stretch that
would be glorious, it also has a stretch that would be pretty dull. If, on
the other hand, I released the marble there, it would follow path B; and
though on B there would be nothing so glorious as that stretch in path A,
there would also be nothing as dull. In the light of my discovery of these
counterfactuals and my appraisal, I make my decision. I make my decision in the light of the various possibilities and their relative excellences;
I dont mindlessly plunge ahead. So theres something like responsiveness
in my process of decision: responsiveness to the possibilities. But having
chosen one of the options, I dont respond to the actual progress of the
marble, and I dont intervene.
Something like that is how the defender of divine eternity thinks of
Gods action with the following important addition: if you and I are
free agents, then God must also know what you and I would freely do.
The toy through which the marble descends is entirely mechanical no
free action there. But human beings are central to Gods decisions; and
if we are capable of free action, then, so a good many thinkers have held,
there must be facts of the matter as to what we would do in various situations, and God must know those facts. There must be counterfactuals
of freedom. For suppose we were capable of free action, but there were
no facts as to what we would freely do in all the various situations in
which we would nd ourselves. Then God would simply have to take a
risk. Hence it is that most of those who hold to Gods eternity either deny

Unqualied divine temporality

human freedom or embrace the thesis that there are counterfactuals of

freedom.

Rather often it is objected to those who hold that Gods actions have temporal locations that, given the similarities between time and space, they
must also hold that God has a spatial location; if one holds that God has a
history, then consistency requires holding that God has a location. I hold
that God does not have a spatial location; how do I answer the charge of
inconsistency?
On the face of it, the charge seems to have very little going for it. An
agent has a spatial location on account of having a body; the location of
the agents body being the location of the agent. When the agent speaks
of something as here, here refers to the region of space in which his or
her body happens to be located at that time. By contrast, if theres some
variation in the acts that an agent performs, then the agent has a history;
then it is in time. But if one doesnt hold that agents are necessarily
embodied, then why shouldnt it be the case that certain agents God,
angels, and so forth have a history without occupying a place?
In his book Eternal God, Paul Helm oers a more specic version of
the objection. He insists that to my argument in God everlasting, that
if God were timelessly eternal there would be temporal matters that God
could never know, a precisely parallel argument can be constructed for
the conclusion that if God has no spatial location, then there would be
spatial matters that God could never know. So if one wishes to hold that
God lacks spatial location, then one must also hold that God is timeless.
Now if one combined the claim that there would be temporal matters
God could never know if God were timelessly eternal, with the claim
that the A-series is not a feature of objective time, only the B-series, then
its likely that an argument along these lines would work. But of course
thats not what I have done. I have argued that the A-series is a feature of
objective time; the temporal matters that God could never know if God
were eternal are all the tensed facts. But to the A-series there is no counterpart in space. Correspondingly, I have argued that in speaking of some
event as happening now, I am not just making a claim about the events
relation to my act of speaking namely, that the two are simultaneous; I
am saying that the event has the ontological status of presently happening.

Oxford: Clarendon Press, , .

Inquiring about God

By contrast, when I say that something is here, I am doing no more than

making a claim concerning its relation to where my body is (presently).
I have a body, God does not; does that imply that there are some facts
I can know that God cannot? For example, I know that the kettle is
now boiling here; do I thereby know some fact that God cannot know?
Denitely not. God knows that the kettle is presently boiling, and knows
where I am, thereby knowing what region of space is here for me. Theres
nothing more God has to know in order to know that the kettle is boiling
here.

As we have seen, Gods action, on the view of the eternalist, consists of
timelessly bringing about events that have temporal locations. Gods
speaking to Moses consists of timelessly bringing about the event consisting of those sounds emerging at that precise time from the unburned
aming bush.
The most important question for the Christian to consider, in reecting on this understanding of divine action, is whether it is compatible
with an orthodox understanding of what happens in the incarnation. So
far as I can see, it is not; whatever we may think in general about Aquinas
strategy, at this point it fails. The actions of Jesus were not simply actions
by the human being Jesus that were brought about by God, plus actions
freely performed by Jesus in situations brought about by God; they were
Gods actions. In the life and deeds of Jesus it was God who dwelt among
us. The narrative of the history of Jesus is not just a narrative concerning
events in the history of the relationship of a human being to God; its a
narrative about God. God does have a history; the doctrine of the incarnation implies that the history of Jesus is the history of God.

In the preceding discussion we have seen that holding that God has no
history, and is on that account timeless, requires not only that one depart
a long way from Scriptures narrative presentation of God but that one
also depart, at various points, from the orthodox theological tradition as
well. Accordingly, we will need powerful reasons for holding that God
is timeless. In principle there might be such reasons. After all, we all do
at certain points depart from Scriptures presentation of God. Scripture
occasionally presents God as having wings: none of us believes that God

Unqualied divine temporality

literally has wings; we all take Scriptures language on this point to be

metaphorical. So we have to be open to considering reasons for concluding that Scriptures narrative concerning God is not to be interpreted as
a narrative of the history of God but only as a narrative of the history of
human beings.
It will have been evident from remarks I have made along the way
that I do not judge the reasons that the tradition has oered in favor of
divine timelessness to be adequate to the task at hand; those who hold
that God has no history have not succeeded in bearing the burden of
proof. On this occasion I will not be able to show that; doing so would
require another essay of at least the length of this present one. I will have
to content myself with displaying where the issues lie and then leaving it
there for the present.
It is not infrequently said, by those who oppose the doctrine of Gods
timelessness, that, in embracing this doctrine, the church fathers were
succumbing to the power of Greek philosophical thought and that later
theologians, on account of the prestige of tradition, then followed in the
footsteps of their predecessors. From this claim I insist on dissociating
myself, and that for a number of reasons.
For one thing, not everything the Greek philosophers said was false;
to observe that some Greek philosopher held that the divine is timeless
leaves open the question whether he was right about that. More important, the objection distorts what happened in the formation of Christian
theology; it represents it as having simply been a matter of resisting or
succumbing to cultural power.
No doubt all of us are subject to some degree to the formative power of
our ambient culture. What impresses one about the church fathers, however, is how weak had become the cultural power of Greek philosophical
thought over their thinking. Rather than simply giving voice to a supposed indoctrination into Greek philosophical thought, they had arguments for their theological convictions concerning God. Some of those
arguments were no doubt rst formulated by one or another Greek philosopher. But its obvious to anybody who looks that the church fathers
were already suciently removed from the cultural power of Greek philosophical thought to be eminently capable of sifting through that part
of their inheritance, agreeing with what they judged themselves to have
good reason to accept and rejecting the rest.

I am here to some extent disagreeing with things I said on this matter in my God everlasting.

Inquiring about God

It is to their arguments, then, that we must attend; we cannot content

ourselves with announcing that their loyalty to Scripture was subverted by
the cultural power over them of Greek philosophical thought. Naturally
some premises in their arguments that seemed plausible to them may not
seem at all plausible to us; when we probe what accounts for that, we may
sometimes conclude that they were at that point reecting the mentality
of the society in which they were reared. Nonetheless, since they gave
reasons, it is to those reasons that we must attend; there is no shortcut
around that.
I have suggested that the fundamental issue at stake, in the discussion
concerning the relation of God to time, is whether God has a history; the
defenders of eternalism hold that God has no history, those like myself
who instead defend Gods everlastingness hold that God does have a history. And I argued that whether or not God has a history depends, in
turn, on whether there is any sort of change in God. Change in God is
what is really at issue.
What reasons have the theologians and philosophers of the Christian
tradition oered for their claim that God is ontologically immutable? So
far as I can determine, the arguments come down to three. Mutability is
incompatible with Gods simplicity, simplicity in turn being grounded in
aseity. Mutability is incompatible with Gods supreme excellence. And
third, to suppose that God changes would blur the distinction between
Creator and creature. All three of these reasons are developed, and
sometimes blended together, in what is perhaps the most rigorous and
sustained defense of Gods timelessness in the Christian theological tradition: chapters of Anselms Monologium.
Heres how the rst line of reasoning goes. God is not in any way composite. A composite requires, for its existence, its components and owes its
being what it is to them. It is what it is through them. They, however, are
not what they are through it. A composite, therefore, just is not supreme
(). In fact, though, everything derives its existence from God. It follows that God is simple that is, not in any way composite. But now suppose that God had a history. Then God would be one thing, at one time,
and a dierent thing at another; God would have parts scattered about
throughout time (). Given simplicity, that is impossible.

On this issue, I am in full agreement with Helm. See Eternal God , .

I am using the translation in Brian Davies and G. R. Evans, eds., Anselm of Canterbury: The
Major Works (Oxford University Press, ). References are given parenthetically in the text.

Unqualied divine temporality

In the following passage this reason is hinted at, and blended with,
the other two reasons: that whereas God is supremely excellent, mutable
things lack a certain excellence, and that the lack of mutability in God is
one of the fundamental dierences between Creator and creature:
So, we may reasonably say, [the supreme beings] place is no place and its time no
time. Now, to have been discovered not to possess time or place, is immediately
to have been declared free from the jurisdiction of the time and place. What,
therefore, no time or place denes, space and time do not conne. The creator
of all substances, the supreme substance, is necessarily free from the natures and
laws of everything it has created from nothing. It is not subject to them. Is it
then under the rules and regulations of time and place? All rational reection,
for every sort of reason, rules this out. Rather its power and its power is just its
essence rules over and regulates everything it has made. ()

Unlike the creature, no part of Gods eternity [leaks] away with the past
into non-existence, or [ies] past, like the scarcely existing momentary
present, or, with the future, [waits] pending, in non-yet existence just
because it is, was and will be ().
I think Anselm is right in his contention that if God has a history, then
God is not unconditioned in the way that Anselm understands God to be
unconditioned, and right in his contention that God lacks something that
Anselm regards as an excellence; likewise he is right in his contention that
if God has a history, then the distinction between Creator and creature
is not grounded in the way Anselm thinks it is grounded. So obviously the
questions to consider are whether Anselms understanding of Gods aseity and excellence is compelling, and whether the person who holds that
God has a history is inevitably left without an adequate way of marking
the distinction between Creator and creature. I hold that the answer to
both questions is no. But it would be a disservice to the issues at stake,
and a dishonoring of Anselm, to discuss them quickly and supercially.
What one says about Gods relation to time involves a very great deal of
the rest of ones theology.

Suering love

My heart grew sombre with grief, and wherever I looked I saw only
death. My own country became a torment and my own home a
grotesque abode of misery. All that we had done together was now
a grim ordeal without him. My eyes searched everywhere for him,
but he was not there to be seen. I hated all the places we had known
together, because he was not in them and they could no longer
whisper to me, Here he comes! as they would have done had he
been alive but absent for a while My soul was a burden, bruised
and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no
place to set it down to rest. (Augustine, Confessions IV, ; IV, )

It is in passages such as this, where he exposes to full view the grief that
overwhelmed him upon the death of his dear friend from Tagaste, that
Augustine is at his most appealing to us in the twentieth century. We are
attracted both by the intensity of his love and grief, and by his willingness to expose that grief to his friends and the readers of his Confessions.
To any who may have experienced torments similar to those Augustine
here describes, the passage also has the mysteriously balming quality of
expressing with delicate precision the grief they themselves have felt. All
the places and all the objects that once whispered Here he comes or
Here she comes have lost their voice and fallen achingly mute.
It is a rough jolt, then, to discover that at those very points in his life
where we nd Augustine most appealing, he, from the time of his conversion onward, found himself thoroughly disgusting. His reason for exposing his grief was to share with his readers his confession to God of the
senselessness and sinfulness of a love so intense for a being so fragile that
its destruction could cause such grief. Why do I talk of these things? he
asks. And he answers, It is time to confess, not to question (Confessions
IV, ).

Translated by R. S. Pine-Co n (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, ). All my

citations from the Confessions will be from this translation and given parenthetically in the text.

Su ering love

In the years between the death of his friend and the death of his mother
Augustine embraced the Christian faith. That embrace made his response
to his mothers death very dierent from that to his friends. I closed her
eyes, he says,
and a great wave of sorrow surged into my heart. It would have over-owed in
tears if I had not made a strong eort of will and stemmed the ow, so that the
tears dried in my eyes. What a terrible struggle it was to hold them back! As she
breathed her last, the boy Adeodatus began to wail aloud and only ceased his
cries when we all checked him. I, too, felt that I wanted to cry like a child, but
a more mature voice within me, the voice of my heart, bade me keep my sobs in
check, and I remained silent. (Confessions IX, )

On that earlier occasion, tears and tears alone were sweet to him, for in
his hearts desire they had taken the place of his friend (Confessions IV, ).
In his reminiscences he asked why that was so, why tears are sweet to the
sorrowful. How can it be that there is sweetness in the fruit we pluck
from the bitter crop of life, in the mourning and the tears, the wailing and
the sighs? (Confessions IV, ). But now, on the occasion of his mothers
death, he fought against the wave of sorrow (Confessions IX, ).
His struggle for self-control was not successful. He reports that after
the burial, as he lay in bed thinking of his devoted mother, the tears
which I had been holding back streamed down, and I let them ow as
freely as they would, making of them a pillow for my heart. On them
it rested (Confessions IX, ). So now, he says to God, I make to you
my confession Let any man read it who will And if he nds that I
sinned by weeping for my mother, even if only for a fraction of an hour,
let him not mock at me but weep himself, if his charity is great. Let
him weep for my sins to you (Confessions IX, ). The sin for which
Augustine wants the person of charity to weep, however, is not so much
the sin of weeping over the death of his mother as the sin of which that
weeping was a sign. I was, says Augustine, guilty of too much worldly
aection.
Obviously there is a mentality coming to expression here that is profoundly foreign to us. In our own day there are still those who hold
back tears usually because they think it unbecoming to cry, seldom
because they think it sinful. But rare is the person who believes that
even to feel grief upon the death of a friend or ones mother is to have
been guilty of too much worldly aection. The mentality expressed not
only shapes Augustines view of the proper place of sorrow and suering
in human life; it also contributes to his conviction that in God there is
no sorrow or suering. Gods life is a life free of sorrow indeed, a life

Inquiring about God

free of upsetting emotions in general, a life free of passions, a life of apathy, untouched by suering, characterized only by steady bliss. In thus
thinking of God, Augustine was by no means alone. Indeed, the view
that Gods life is that of blissful non-suering apathy enjoyed near total
consensus until the twentieth century. Among the church fathers, only
Origen and Lactantius thought dierently and Origen, only inconsistently so.
But why would anyone who placed himself in the Christian tradition think of Gods life as that of non-suering apathy? The identity of
that tradition is determined (in part) by the adherence of its members, in
one way or another, to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.
And even those who read while running cannot fail to notice that God
is there pictured as one who sueringly experiences this world and therefore grieves. What was it, then, that led the tradition to bracket this
dimension of the biblical picture of God? Many of our modern theologians reject the proposition that God acts miraculously in history; if they
remain within the Christian tradition, they bracket that part of the
biblical narrative and picture. But bracketing did not begin with the
Enlightenment. It was practiced already by the church fathers, on all the
passages that spoke of the passions and the suering of God. In this essay
I wish to dig down to the roots of this practice; and having done that, to
go on to ask: Were they right in this claim of theirs, that God does not
sueringly experience the world?
We cannot do better than begin with Augustine. But we would be
ill-advised to move at once to what Augustine said about emotions and
suering in the life of God. For it was true of Augustine, as it was of
most others in the tradition, that his reections on the place of emotions and suering in Gods life were merely a component within his
more comprehensive reections on the place of emotions and suering
in the ideal life of persons generally divine and human together. We
must try, then, to grasp that totality. Let us begin with what Augustine
says about the proper place of emotions and suering in human
experience.
Augustine frames his thought within the eudaemonistic tradition of
antiquity. We are all in search of happiness by which Augustine and
the other ancients did not mean a life in which happiness outweighs grief
and ennui but a life from which grief and ennui have been cast out a
life of uninterrupted bliss. Furthermore, Augustine aligns himself with
the Platonic tradition in his conviction that ones love, ones eros, is the
fundamental determinant of ones happiness. Augustine never imagined

Su ering love

that a human being could root out eros from his existence. Incomplete
beings that we are, we inescapably long for fulllment. The challenge,
accordingly, is to choose objects for ones love such that happiness
ensues.
Now it was as obvious to Augustine as it is to all of us that grief ensues
when that which we love is destroyed or dies, or is altered in such a way
that we no longer nd it lovable. Says he, in reecting on his grief upon
the death of his friend, I lived in misery like every man whose soul is
tethered by the love of things that cannot last and then is agonized to
lose them The grief I felt for the loss of my friend had struck so easily into my inmost heart simply because I had poured out my soul upon
him, like water upon sand, loving a man who was mortal as though he
were never to die (Confessions IV, ; IV, ). The cure is to detach ones
love from such objects and to attach it to something immutable and
indestructible. For Augustine, the only candidate was God. Blessed are
those who love you, O God No one can lose you unless he forsakes
you (Confessions IV, ).
What might be called Augustines evangelistic strategy follows
straightforwardly. If it is happiness and rest for your soul that you
desire and who does not? then x your love on the eternal immutable God. Addressing his own soul, and thereby all others as well,
Augustine says: [In God] is the place of peace that cannot be disturbed, and he will not withhold himself from your love unless you
withhold your love from him Make your dwelling in him, my soul.
Entrust to him whatever you have All that is withered in you will
be made to thrive again. All your sickness will be healed (Confessions
IV, ).

No doubt for the reason that is vividly stated in this passage from Plotinus:
And so this being, [Love, Eros] has from everlasting come into existence from the souls aspiration towards the higher and the good, and he was there always, as long as Soul, too, existed.
And he is a mixed thing, having a part of need, in that he wishes to be lled, but not without a
share of plenitude, in that he seeks what is wanting to that which he already has; for certainly
that which is altogether without a share in the good would not ever seek the good. So he is
born of Plenty and Poverty But his mother is Poverty, because aspiration belongs to that
which is in need. (Enneads III, , ; translated by A. H. Armstrong [Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, ])
For arguments that the full notion of eros in Plato and Plotinus included some component of
self-giving, see A. H. Armstrong, Platonic Eros and Christian Agape, in A. H. Armstrong,
Plotinian and Christian Studies (London: Variorum Reprints, ), and John M. Rist, Eros and
Psyche: Studies in Plato, Plotinus, and Origen (University of Toronto Press, ).

Inquiring about God

Part of what obstructs our detachment from the world and attachment to God is illusion as to where happiness can be found. Much of
Augustines endeavor in his early writings was devoted to penetrating his
readers veil of illusions. But a striking feature of Augustines thought
here he departs decisively from the Platonic tradition is his conviction
that illumination is not sucient to redirect love. Though we may know
that only in loving God is abiding happiness to be found, yet the beauties
of the world sink their talons so deep into our souls that only by the grace
of God and the most agonizing of struggles can we break loose. Nowhere
is this anti-Platonic point made more vividly in Augustines writings than
in the brilliant description of his experience in the garden just before his
conversion:
I now found myself driven by the tumult in my breast to take refuge in this garden, where no one could interrupt that erce struggle, in which I was my own
contestant, until it came to its conclusion I was frantic, overcome by violent
anger with myself for not accepting your will and entering into your covenant.
Yet in my bones I knew that this was what I ought to do. In my heart of hearts I
praised it to the skies. And to reach this goal I needed no chariot or ship. I need
not even walk as far as I had come from the house to the place where I sat, for to
make the journey, and to arrive safely, no more was required than an act of will.
But it must be a resolute and wholehearted act of the will I tore my hair and
hammered my forehead with my sts; I locked my ngers and hugged my knees;
and I did all this because I made an act of will to do it Yet I did not do that
one thing which I should have been far, far better pleased to do than all the rest
and could have done at once My lower instincts, which had taken rm hold of
me, were stronger than the higher, which were untried. And the closer I came to
the moment which was to mark the great change in me, the more I shrank from
my purpose; it merely left me hanging in suspense. (Confessions VIII, ; VIII, )

I see no reason to interpret Augustine as opposed to all enjoyment of

earthly things: of food, of drink, of conversation, of art. Wary, yes;
opposed, no. What he says is only that we should root out the love of
such things root out all attachment to them such that their destruction
would cause us grief. Let my soul praise you for these things, he says,
O God, creator of them all; but the love of them, which we feel, through
the senses of the body, must not be like glue to bind my soul to them
(Confessions IV, ). To enjoy the taste of kiwi fruit is acceptable provided
that ones enjoyment is not such that if it proves unattainable, one grieves.
Though we must not love the world, we may enjoy the world. Admittedly
Augustine says little by way of grounding the legitimacy of such enjoyment. For example, the theme of the things of the world constituting
Gods blessing extended to us is subdued in him. In the famous passage

Su ering love

in Book X of the Confessions where the things of creation speak, what

they say is not Receive us with enjoyment as Gods blessing but Turn
away from us to our maker. Nonetheless I think we must allow that for
Augustine, the detached life need not be a joyless life.
But suppose that one has torn oneself loose from love of the things of
this world and turned oneself to loving God detached oneself from the
world and attached oneself to God. Has Augustine not overlooked the
fact that this is to open oneself to a new mode of grief? When Augustine
recommends to us the love of God as the only source of abiding happiness, he is not recommending that we nd delight in our own acts of
devotion. He is not an arch-Calvinist urging that we delight in our acts
of social obedience nor an arch-Orthodox urging that we delight in our
celebration of the liturgy. He is urging that we delight in the experience
of the presence of God. It was the presence of his friend, he says, that was
sweeter to me than all the joys of life as I loved it then (Confessions IV, ).

I see no other way to make the point in the text than with the word enjoy or some near synonym such as delight. But to do so is to risk introducing serious confusion into the interpretation
of Augustine. For he was fond of drawing a distinction between use (utl ) and enjoyment ( frui),
to equate enjoying with loving, and then to say that God alone must be enjoyed earthly things
are only for use. (See the chapter Marius Victorinus and Augustine, by R. A. Markus in A. H.
Armstrong, ed., The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy [Cambridge
University Press, ], .) My point, however, is that the use to which earthly things may
be put is probably not to be conceived in grimly utilitarian fashion; we may enjoy them. On the
other hand, Augustine was ever conscious of the fact that delight in earthly things may become
love. See his reections on the enjoyment of food, music, etc. in Confessions X, .
Here is perhaps also the best place to discuss a terminological point about love amor. I think
there can be no doubt that most of the time Augustine says that we should love God alone.
And to explicate his thought on this, I have taken love to be that mode of attachment to a thing
which is such that the destruction or change of that thing would cause one grief. But there are
also passages in which Augustine, with the great Chain of Being in mind, says that we should
love things in proportion to their worth. One nds a few such passages in Of True Religion.
But Markus (Cambridge History, ) cites one of the most elaborate of them, taken from
De Doctrina Christiana I, .: the righteous man is the man who values things at their true
worth; he has ordered love, which prevents him from loving what is not to be loved, or not loving what is to be loved, from preferring what ought to be loved less, from loving equally what
ought to be loved either less or more, or from loving either less or more what ought to be loved
equally. Probably all of us, in our rst approach to Augustine, are inclined to give such passages
as this prominence, rather than those in which he says that God alone is to be loved. They sound
so much more humane! But I think there can be absolutely no doubt that Augustine generally
meant by love, that degree of attachment to something such that the destruction or change of
that object will cast one into grief; and that he meant to say that, in that sense, God alone is to be
loved. Other things are only to be used, this use including what I have called enjoyment. Now
naturally use and enjoyment are forms of attachment to things. Hence it is not inappropriate
for Augustine sometimes to speak of a properly tempered love for these things. But the crux of
the issue is this: our love for such things is not to be such that it can cause us grief. As we shall
see shortly, Augustine also says, as one would expect, that each of us is to love our neighbor as
ourselves. But how are we to love ourselves?

Inquiring about God

This sweetness was to be replaced by the sweetness of Gods presence.

Augustine knew of that sweetness. Looking out from a window into
the courtyard of a house in Ostia, he was discoursing with his mother,
shortly before her death, about God. And while we spoke of the eternal
Wisdom, he says, longing for it and straining for it with all the strength
of our hearts, for one eeting instant we reached out and touched it
(Confessions IX, ). He imagines that blissful experience prolonged.
But it never is prolonged, not in our world. The experience of the saints
through the ages is the experience of the sweet presence of God interrupted with long, aching stretches of Gods absence. They experience the
dark night of the soul, and in that night, they grieve. God will not withhold himself from your love unless you withhold your love from him,
says Augustine (Confessions IV, ). Many of the great mystics would disagree. But in any case, if humanitys greatest lovers of God nd their love
plunging them into grief, then one cannot recommend turning ones love
to God as the way to eliminate grief from ones experience.
In fact Augustine, by the time of writing his Confessions, agreed that to
reorient oneself toward loving God is to open oneself to a new mode of
grief. But the grief he had in mind was not that of which I have just spoken, that of the lover of God grieving because God hides Godself. It was
that of the lover of God grieving because her own love proves weak and
inconstant. The response Augustine urged to the grief that ensues upon
change and decay in the objects we love is that we detach ourselves from
such objects and attach ourselves to God in whom there is no shadow
of turning. But this newly oriented self never wholly wins out over the
old. And over that repetitious reappearance of the old self, the new now
grieves. The passive grief of negated aection is replaced by the active grief
of lamenting over the faults of ones religious character over those persistent habits of the heart that one now recognizes as sin.
Prominent in the ethical philosophy of middle and late antiquity were
discussions over the proper place of emotions in life. In those discussions,
the Stoic view was famous. Augustine, in The City of God, participates
in those discussions by staking out his own position on the proper place
of emotions in the life of the godly person in opposition to the Stoic
position.
Now the Stoics did not say that in the ideal life there would be no emotional coloring to ones experience. They insisted, on the contrary, that
in such a life there would be various non-perturbing emotions that they
called eupatheiai. They regularly cited three of these: joy, wishfulness, and
caution. Their thought was that the ideal life, the happy life, is the life

Su ering love

of the wise person of the person who, by virtue of directing his life by
reason, is a person whose character and intentions are morally virtuous.
To make it clear that, in their judgment, the only thing good in itself
is moral good, they typically refused even to call anything else good.
Certain other things are, at best, preferable. The wise person, then, will
rejoice over the moral status he has attained, will wish for the continuation of that status, and will be watchful for what threatens it.
The Stoics went on to say, though, that the sage would be without
pathos, without passion. He would be apathes, apathetic. His condition
would be that of apatheia apathy, impassibility, passionlessness. What
did they mean?
In the interpretation that he oers of their position, Augustine takes
a pathos to be simply a perturbing, upsetting emotion such as fear, grief,
or ecstasy. He does not incorporate into his concept of pathos any theory as to the rightness or wrongness of such emotions. And he was of
the opinion that, in spite of all the verbal dierences between the way in
which the Peripatetics expressed their view as to the place of the passions,
thus understood, in the life of the moral person, and the way in which
the Stoics expressed theirs, there was no substantive dierence between
them.
The Peripatetics said that though passions may befall the moral person
as well as the non-moral, they will not overthrow the rule of reason in his
life, while the Stoics said that the wise man is not subject to these perturbations (City of God IX, ). To illustrate why, in his judgment, there was
no substantive dierence between these two positions, Augustine cited an
anecdote from Aulus Gellius. Gellius was once at sea with a famous Stoic
when a storm came up and the Stoic became pale with fear of shipwreck.
After the storm had passed, Gellius courteously asked the Stoic why he
had become fearful. Thereupon the Stoic pulled out a book of Epictetus
and pointed to a passage in which the point was made that:
When these impressions are made by alarming and formidable objects, it must
needs be that they move the soul even of the wise man, so that for a little he
trembles with fear, or is depressed by sadness, these impressions anticipating the
work of reason and self-control; but this does not imply that the mind accepts

Augustine was not alone in antiquity in holding this view. Carneades held it as well or at least
went around asserting it. Cf. J. M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, ),
. My understanding of the Stoics is very much indebted to this book by Rist. Also helpful is
F. H. Sanbach, The Stoics (New York: W. W. Norton Co., ).
Augustine, The City of God , translated by Marcus Dods (New York: Random House, ). My
citations will be from this edition and given parenthetically in the text.

Inquiring about God

these evil impressions, or approves or consents to them. For this consent is, they
think, in a mans power; there being this dierence between the mind of the wise
man and that of the fool, that the fools mind yields to these passions and consents to them, while that of the wise man, though it cannot help being invaded
by them, yet retains with unshaken rmness a true and steady persuasion of
those things which it ought rationally to desire or avoid. (City of God IX, )

In short, whatever emotions befall the wise person, his will and judgment
remain morally intact.
Augustine goes on to speculate that perhaps the Stoics meant to assert
that the wisdom which characterizes the wise man is clouded by no
error and sullied by no taint, but, with this reservation that his wisdom
remains undisturbed, he is exposed to the impressions which the goods
and ills of this life (or, as they prefer to call them, the advantages or disadvantages) make upon them. And he goes on to remark, somewhat wryly,
that even though the Stoic refused to call his bodily safety a good, preferring some other such word as thing preferred or advantage, his
turning pale with fear indicated that he esteemed his bodily safety rather
highly as highly, indeed, as the Peripatetic who was quite willing to call
bodily safety a good and in the same situation would probably also have
turned pale from fear over the threat to it.
But if this is what the Stoics mean, then, says Augustine, all parties
agree that though the wise person may well experience such passions as
fear and grief, he will not allow them to overthrow the rule of reason in
his life will not allow them to damage his virtue. Though the wise person may not be free of passions, he will be free from them. Though they
may befall him, he will not be subject to them; they will not inuence his
intentions and judgments. It is in that sense that the sage is characterized
by apatheia by apathy, passionlessness, impassibility.
Since our concern here is with Augustines formulation of his own
view in contrast to that of the Stoics, what is directly relevant is not what
the Stoics actually said on the proper place of emotions in life but what
Augustine interpreted them as saying. Nonetheless it is worth observing that probably Augustine has described a late, non-standard version
of Stoicism. For it is clear that the founding fathers of Stoicism, Zeno

It is interesting that Rist gives essentially the same formula in this passage from Stoic
Philosophy: The Stoic wise man is a man of feeling, but his feelings do not control, or even inuence, his decisions and his actions. In this terminology he is passionless (apathes), but not without
rational feelings. From Rists full discussion it becomes clear, however, that the classic Stoics
thought that, in fact, the perturbing emotions never were fully in accord with reason.
See chapter , Problems of Pleasure and Pain, in Rist, Stoic Philosophy.

Su ering love

and Chrysippus, said that a pathos is an excessive impulse, a disease

which aects our basic impulses, an irrational movement of the soul,
an unnatural movement of the soul which is contrary to reason, etc.
And by such sayings they meant to imply, among other things, that a
pathos is based on, or is even to be identied with, a judgment that is false
and contrary to reason. Passions are based on (or identical with) erroneous judgments of evaluated fact that lead to (or are) irrational feelings
and excessive impulses. But if this is ones understanding of a pathos, then
obviously one will hold that passions will in no form whatsoever appear
in the life of the fully wise person. And that in fact is what the mainline
Stoics claimed when they said that the wise person will be characterized
by apatheia.
In principle the question remains open, however, whether all emotional
disturbances with fear, grief, and ecstasy as prime examples are passions on this concept of passion. It is clear that the classic Stoics thought
they were. One grieves, they would have said, only over what one evaluates as evil; but the sage, nding no trace of moral evil in himself, has
nothing over which to grieve. So too, one fears what one evaluates as an
evil threatening; but for the sage, who is steady in virtue, there are no
threatening evils. And one goes into ecstasy over something that happens
to come ones way that one evaluates as good. But for the sage, there are
no goods that just happen to come his way; that which is the only thing
good for him, namely, his own moral character, is entirely of his own
making. It was, thus, the contention of the classic Stoics that as a matter
of fact the upsetting emotions are all passions, and will, on that account,
have no place in the life of the wise person. The true sage experiences no
emotional disturbances.

In the above I follow A. C. Lloyd, Emotion and Decision in Stoic Psychology, in John M. Rist,
ed., The Stoics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, ). Compare the summary by
A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, ), :
The Stoic sage is free from all passions. Anger, anxiety, cupidity, dread, elation, these and
similar extreme emotions are all absent from his disposition. He does not regard pleasure as
something good, nor pain as something evil The Stoic sage is not insensitive to painful or
pleasurable sensations, but they do not move his soul excessively. He is impassive towards
them. But he is not entirely impassive His disposition is characterized by good emotional
states. Well-wishing, wishing another man good things for his sake; joy: rejoicing in virtuous
actions, a tranquil life, a good conscience ; and wariness, reasonable disinclination.
Augustine himself, in various scattered passages, uses the classic Stoic concept of pathos. He
speaks, for example, of that state which the Greeks call pathos, whence our word passion is
derived; pathos, and passion, being a motion of the mind against reason (City of God VIII, ).
Using this denition, one would have to express Augustines interpretation of the Stoic position
as that such a perturbing phenomenon as fear or grief might or might not, in a given case, be a

Inquiring about God

The dispute between the classic Stoics and the late Gellius-type Stoics
was thus a subtle one: Does one become emotionally upset only over what
one judges as evil or also over what one judges as non-preferable? Can
there be emotional disturbances not based on false evaluations? That dispute we need not enter. However, a decision on terminology is necessary.
It will be far and away most convenient for our purposes here to use the
word pathos in its neutral sense. A pathos, in the remainder of my discussion, will simply be an emotional upset, an emotional disturbance. (And
probably most of us would not even speak of those phenomena that the
Stoics called eupatheiai, and that were thought to lack any element of disturbance, as emotions.)
His own position, says Augustine, is that the Stoics and Peripatetics
were correct in their central contention: a life free from those emotions
which are contrary to reason and disturb the mind is obviously a good
and most desirable quality (City of God XIV, ). The context makes
clear that Augustine means to say something much stronger: a life entirely
free of passions (emotional upset) is to be desired. For ideal existence is
incompatible with being overcome in the way in which one is overcome
by emotions. And beyond that, it is incompatible with the suering, the
vexation, that is a component in such negative emotions as fear and
grief.
However, Augustines main emphasis does not fall on this point of
agreement between himself and the Stoics. It falls instead on his insistence that in this present life a person who desires to live in truly godly
fashion will not try to live a life devoid of pathos, of passion, of emotional
upset. She will not be apathetic. If some, with a vanity monstrous in proportion to its rarity, have become enamoured of themselves because they
can be stimulated and excited by no emotion, moved or bent by no aection, such persons rather lose all humanity than obtain true tranquility,
says Augustine (City of God XIV, ).
The reason is that none of us avoids sin. And the godly person will
grieve over the sins into which she has fallen as well as fear falling into
new ones. She will grieve over the state of her soul. If apatheia be understood as a condition in which no fear terries nor any pain annoys,
we must in this life renounce such a state if we would live according to
pathos. It would be so if it overthrew the rule of reason in the person experiencing it; otherwise
it would not be. And then to say that the wise person is characterized by apathy would be to
say that such perturbing phenomena as fear and grief would not function in him as passions; it
would not be to say that he never experiences these.

Su ering love

Gods will (City of God XIV, ). An ethic for the perfect sage is not
an ethic for the imperfect lover of God. Such a person will not just let
the emotions of fear and grief take their natural course in her life, merely
seeing to it that they do not lead to bad intentions and false judgments.
Nor will she try to root them out entirely. She will cultivate fear and sorrow fear and sorrow over the right things, however; namely, over sin.
The decisive point in Augustines departure from the classic Stoics lies in
his conviction that some fear and some sorrow is based on correct evaluation. The issue, he says, is not so much whether a pious soul is angry,
as why he is angry; not whether he is sad, but what is the course of his
sadness; not whether he fears, but what he fears (City of God IX, ; cf.
XIV, ). The eudaemonistic ideal of antiquity begins to creak and crack
before our eyes. Though we are to long for eudaemonia, says Augustine, it
would be wrong in this life to pursue it.
Now most certainly the Stoics did not recommend the cultivation of
passion in the life of the non-sage, not even in the life of the person committed to becoming a sage who falls prey every now and then to weakness
or temptation. Yet it is hard to see how they could object in principle
to adopting in their own way what Augustine here holds. Augustine has
argued that eros must be turned away from the things of this world to
God, on the ground that we must abolish the grief that follows upon the
change or destruction of objects of eros. Yet this does not mean for him
the elimination of grief and fear from life. We struggle now to reorient
our love to God. But the self does not turn freely on its axis. And so we
grieve grieve over not being able to turn right round. We grieve over our
persistent failure to achieve the project of reorientating our love. Now
the Stoics said that the sage would both rejoice over his moral perfection
and be wary of the temptations that lie in wait. But, having said that, it
is hard to see what grounds they could have for resisting admitting the
propriety of grief over moral failure by the person struggling to become a
sage. For such an emotional upset would be based on a true, not a false,

Th is is the theme of chapter , The Lost Future, in Peter Browns superb biography, Augustine
of Hippo (London: Faber & Faber, ). Consider especially this passage on p. :
Augustine is a man who has realized that he was doomed to remain incomplete in his present
existence, that what he wished for most ardently would never be more than a hope, postponed
to a nal resolution of all tensions, far beyond this life. Anyone who thought otherwise, he felt,
was either morally obtuse or a doctrinaire. All a man could do was to yearn for the absent
perfection, to feel its loss intensely, to pine for it Th is marks the end of a long-established
classical ideal of perfection: Augustine would never achieve the concentrated tranquility of
the supermen that still gaze out at us from some mosaics in Christian churches and from the
statues of pagan sages.

Inquiring about God

evaluation. In the classic Stoic sense of pathos, it would not be a pathos. It

is true that Augustine stood in the Platonic tradition of seeing happiness
as lying in the satisfaction of eros while the Stoics saw happiness as lying
in the elimination of eros and the achievement of the project of being
a fully moral self. Yet grief over ones moral failure seems as appropriate in the Stoic universe as does grief over ones religious failure in the
Augustinian.
It is in what Augustine went on to say next that he burst outside not
only what any Stoic said but what any Stoic could possibly have said
indeed, what any ancient pagan ethicist could have said. Augustine says
that we are not only to grieve over our own sins and be fearful of falling
into new ones. We are also to grieve over the sins of others and to rejoice
in their repentance (City of God XIV, ). And, motivated by pity, we are to
work for their deliverance. We are to be merciful.
We must understand Augustine aright here. He is not suddenly bringing eros back in. He is not saying that our lives are incomplete unless they
are attached by eros to our fellows. Eros is to remain xed on God. Yet we
are to grieve over the religious condition of the souls of all humanity or,
more concretely, of all those whom we know.
What is Augustines thought here? He never quite spells it out. I see no
alternative, however, but to interpret it along the following lines: each of
us is to be joined in a solidarity of joy and grief with all humanity joy
and grief over the right things, be it added: namely, over the state of our
souls. I am to rejoice and grieve over the religious condition of my soul
and, in the very same way, to rejoice and grieve over the condition of
yours. In the most strict of senses, I am to love my neighbor as myself
as if he were myself. The idea is not that I am to recognize some value
in you that fullls me; that would be the snake of earthly eros slinking
back in. Rather, I am to live in emotional solidarity with you. Instead of
my project being simply to achieve my own true happiness, my project
must be to achieve our true happiness. My happiness is not to be achieved
without yours being achieved. Often this solidarity will consist in bearing your grief and sharing your joy. But the identication Augustine has
in mind goes beyond even such sympathy. For it may be that you are not
grieving over your soul when you should be. Then I will grieve on your
behalf, grieving even over your not grieving.
Implicit in this vision is a recognition of the worth of each human self.
If one aims exclusively at happiness for ones own self, the tacit attribution of a certain kind of worth to ones self that this project presupposes
scarcely comes to light. But if one exists in a solidarity of grieving and

Su ering love

rejoicing with all humanity, then it is clear that one is thereby ascribing a
certain worthiness to each and every human being that one is not ascribing, say, to any animal. Human beings are worthy of being caught up
in ones solidarity of grieving and rejoicing. One is to honor every human
soul by grieving and rejoicing over its religious failures and successes just
as one honors ones own soul by grieving and rejoicing over its failures
and successes. The worthiness thereby tacitly ascribed to each and every
human soul is not the worthiness that consists in a persons degree of
godliness; after all, one grieves most intensely over those who are least
godly. Rather, if it be asked why it is appropriate to exist in this mysterious honoring solidarity with all human beings, the answer Augustine
gave, all too cryptically, is this: because we are all icons of God.

Thus we see in Augustine, and in all those who accept with Augustinian seriousness the biblical injunction to love ones neighbor as ones self, the seed of that plant that eventually blossomed into the recognition of natural human rights, a blossom that, in the opinion of some,
has gone to seed, destroying that sense of human solidarity from which it sprang. I have subsequently explored Augustines relation to rights in part II of Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, ).
Th is whole line of interpretation is conrmed, I judge, by a fascinating and, to most of us, astonishing and even oensive, passage in Augustines Of True Religion, written at virtually the same
time as the Confessions :
Only he is overcome who has what he loves snatched from him by his adversary. He who loves only
what cannot be snatched from him is indubitably unconquerable He cannot lose his neighbour
whom he loves as himself, for he does not love even in himself the things that appear to the eyes or
to any other bodily sense. So he has inward fellowship with him whom he loves as himself.
The rule of love is that one should wish his friend to have all the good things he wants to have
himself, and should not wish the evils to befall his friend that he wishes to avoid himself. He
shows this benevolence towards all men. If a man were to love another not as himself but
as a beast of burden, or as the baths, or as a gaudy or garrulous bird, that is for some temporal
pleasure or advantage he hoped to derive, he must serve not a man but, what is much worse, a
foul and detestable vice, in that he does not love the man as a man ought to be loved.
Man is not to be loved by man even as brothers after the esh are loved, or sons, or wives, or
kinsfolk, or relatives, or fellow citizens. For such love is temporal. We should have no such
connections as are contingent upon birth and death, if our nature had remained in obedience
to the commandments of God and in the likeness of his image Accordingly, the Truth himself calls us back to our original and perfect state, bids us to resist carnal custom and teaches
that no one is t for the kingdom of God unless he hates these carnal relationships. Let no
one think that is inhuman. It is more inhuman to love a man because he is your son and not
because he is a man, that is, not to love that in him which belongs to God, but to love that
which belongs to yourself.
If we are ablaze with love for eternity we shall hate temporal relationships. Let a man love his
neighbour as himself. No one is his own father or son or kinsman or anything of the kind, but
is simply a man. Whoever loves another as himself ought to love that in him which is his real
self. Our real selves are not bodies. Whoever, then, loves in his neighbour anything but his
real self does not love him as himself.
Why should not he be unconquered who in loving man loves nothing but the man, the creature
of God, made according to his image? It is never improper to live aright. Whoever does this
and loves it, not only does not envy those who imitate him, but also treats them with the greatest

Inquiring about God

Thus in the Augustinian universe there is a quadripartite distinction

among modes of worth and valuing. God has one mode of worth; we
express our recognition of that worth by loving God and God alone.
Human beings as icons of God have another kind of worth; we exhibit
our recognition of that mode of worth by rejoicing and grieving over the
religious health of their souls. The morally admirable person has another
mode of worth, one that the morally despicable person lacks. And the
things of the world have yet a dierent kind of worth; we value them as
useful and, perhaps, as enjoyable.
The Stoic universe was profoundly dierent at least as interpreted
by that ne scholar of late antiquity, J. M. Rist. The Stoic, says Rist,
regarded only human beings as of value, and regarded the value of human
beings as determined entirely by their moral status. The Augustinian
split between their worth as persons and their moral status has no counterpart in the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius, observes Rist, tells us that each
man is worth as much as what he is concerned with The implication is
clear: those whose character is preoccupied with right reason and virtue
are of value, those whose tastes are lower can be graded accordingly. Some
people are presumably worth nothing at all; and these should be treated
accordingly. And Epictetus remarked that neither the nose nor the eyes
are sucient to make a man, but he is a man who makes properly human
judgments. Here is someone who does not listen to reason he is an ass.
Here is one whose sense of self-respect has become numbed: he is useless,
a sheep, anything rather than a man.
It is true that such Stoics as Epictetus and Marcus praised philostorgia,
benevolence.
possible kindness and good will. But he does not stand in any need of them. What he loves in
them he himself completely and perfectly possesses. So when a man loves his neighbour as himself, he is not envious of him any more than he is envious of himself. He gives him such help as
he can as if he were helping himself. But he does not need him any more than he needs himself.
He needs God alone, by cleaving to whom he is happy. No one can take God from him. He,
then, is most truly and certainly an unconquerable man who cleaves to God (in the edition
translated by J. H. S. Burleigh [Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., ], xlvi, xlvii, ).

In his Retractions Augustine discusses this passage and says that he should not have said, hate
temporal relationships; if our forebears had done this, we their descendants would never have
been born and Gods company of the elect would not have been lled up. So hating is inappropriate. And of course in the text I have not interpreted Augustine as proposing hatred. The
thing remarkable about the Retractions passage, for my purposes, is that Augustine does not
retract the doctrine of love expounded in this passage from Of True Religion.
John M. Rist, The Stoic Concept of Detachment, in John M. Rist, ed., The Stoics (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, ), .
Ibid., .

Su ering love

Yet along with their emphasis on philostorgia these writers are inclined to point
out that the wise man is not concerned over the death of a child. Marcus
expressly points out both that the wise man is benevolent ( philostorgos) and that
he is the most devoid of passions contrary to reason. Hence we have to conclude that philostorgia neither confers nor recognizes value in its objects, nor
does it think of its objects as unique and irreplaceable, nor does it demand any
overwhelming emotional commitment in those who exhibit it.

It is clearly incumbent on each man to be emotionally committed to

one human being, or rather one human phenomenon alone, namely, ones
own moral character and moral dignity. For the only good is moral
character. And the only moral character any of us can be responsible for
is our own. Hence if I come across another moral character I can respect
it; but it cannot be for me a good. The sole good for me is my own moral
character. Each man has one and only one object of value to be cherished, namely, his own higher self. By a law of nature he is not able to love
others as he loves himself. Only another individual can love himself, just
as only I can love myself. There is only one canon by which the wise man
is able to judge his own behavior: Is it conducive to my own virtue, or
does it risk compromising the moral self which it is my unique prerogative to preserve?
A Stoic, then, would put to Augustine this fundamental challenge:
your recommended solidarity of grief and joy is incoherent. You cannot
bear to the religious character of others the relation you bear to your own.
It makes no sense to grieve and rejoice over theirs as you do over yours. To
this deep challenge Augustine might well have made two responses: even
if it is true that I cannot constitute anyone elses religious character in
the same way that I can constitute my own, it does not follow that the
only thing good in my universe is my own character. For it is not true
that only what is in a persons control is of value for that person. And second, the assumption of self-reliance must be replaced by a doctrine of coresponsibility. We are social creatures capable of inuencing each other;
it is on that account that we are responsible for the religious condition of
others as well as for that of ourselves. Religious character is not formed by
isolated self-determining individuals.
I would be doing a disservice to Augustine if I did not mention, before
concluding this section of our discussion, that now and then he indicates

Ibid., . Ibid., . Ibid., .

A Plotinian would do the same. See chapter : The Self and Others, in J. M. Rist, Plotinus: The
Road to Reality (Cambridge University Press, ).

Inquiring about God

that it is also appropriate to grieve over the innocent misfortunes that

come our way over things like hunger and physical pain. What is compassion, he asks in one passage, but a fellow-feeling for anothers misery,
which prompts us to help him if we can? And this emotion is obedient to
reason, when compassion is shown without violating right, as when the
poor are relieved, or the penitent forgiven (City of God IX, ). But just
as it would have been a disservice not to have mentioned this point, so
also it would be a disservice to give it any more emphasis than Augustine
himself gave it which is, very little.
We have been speaking of the place of the passions in the life of the
imperfectly godly person in this imperfect world of ours. But, we must
be reminded that Augustine also points us away from life in this world
to a perfected life in a perfected world a life not earned or achieved
but granted. In that life there will be no such emotional disturbances
as grief and fear. For that will be a life of uninterrupted bliss; and who
that is aected by fear or grief can be called absolutely blessed? Even
when these aections are well regulated, and according to Gods will,
they are peculiar to this life, not to that future life we look for (City
of God XIV, ). Augustines argument, as we have seen, is not the Stoic
argument that the passions are always based on false evaluations; they
are not. His argument is that having emotions always involves being
overcome, and that the pain embedded within such emotions as grief
and fear is incompatible with full happiness. Grief and fear are not
as such incompatible with reason. They are as such incompatible with
eudaemonia. Hence the abolition of those passions from our lives will
not occur by way of illumination as to the true nature of things. It will
occur by way of removal from our existence of that which it is appropriate to fear or grieve over.
So our perfected existence will exhibit not only eros attached entirely
to God, but also apathy. For attachment to God and detachment from
the world, we struggle here and now. For apathy, we merely long, in
the meanwhile fearing and grieving over the evil worth fearing and
grieving over. Struggle and longing, aiming and hoping, pull apart in
the Augustinian universe. It is not, though let it be repeated a feelingless apathy for which we long. We long for a life of joy and bliss. If
apatheia be understood as the condition where the mind is the subject
of no emotion, says Augustine, then who would not consider this
insensibility to be worse than all vices? It may, indeed, reasonably be
maintained that the perfect blessedness we hope for shall be free from
all sting of fear or sadness; but who that is not quite lost to truth would

Su ering love

say that neither love nor joy shall be experienced there? (City of God
XIV, ).
And now the eternal life of God, as understood by Augustine, can be
very simply described: Gods life satises the eudaemonistic ideal implicit in
all that has preceded. Gods life is through and through blissful. Thus God
too is free of negative pathe. Of Mitleiden with those who are suering,
God feels nothing, as also God feels no pain over the shortfall of godliness
in Gods errant creatures. Gods state is apatheia an apatheia characterized
positively by the steady non-perturbing state of joy. God dwells eternally in
blissful non-suering apatheia. Nothing that happens in the world alters
Gods blissful unperturbed serenity. Certainly God is not oblivious to the
world. There is in God a steady disposition of benevolence toward Gods
human creatures. But this disposition to act benevolently proceeds on its
uninterrupted successful course whatever transpires in the world.
In sum, the Augustinian God turns out to be remarkably like the Stoic
sage: devoid of passions, unfamiliar with longing, foreign to suering,
dwelling in steady bliss, exhibiting to others only benevolence. Augustine
fought free of the Stoic (and neo-Platonic) vision when it came to humanity; when it came to God, he succumbed.
The result, as one would expect, was unresolved tension in his thought.
What dierence is there between God and us which brings it about that,
for us, authentic existence in the presence of evil is a suering awareness
whereas, for God, it is a non-suering, perpetually blissful, awareness?
Augustine never says. Sometimes he suggests that when reality is seen
whole as God sees it, then nothing appears evil but everything is seen
to make its contribution to the goodness of the whole. Thus God has no
suering awareness of evil because there is no evil of which to be aware.
But if this were Augustines steady conviction, then he would seek to illuminate us as to the illusoriness of evil rather than urging us to cultivate
suering over evil.
Augustine does indeed make clear that in one important respect Gods
life is not to be identied with our eudaemonistic ideal. In humanitys

Augustine saw that if the bliss of our perfected existence is to be entirely unalloyed, regret will
have to be eliminated by forgetfulness. In its perfected existence, the soul will enjoy an everlasting pleasure of eternal joys, forgetful of faults, forgetful of punishments, but not therefore so
forgetful of her deliverance, that she be ungrateful to her deliverer (City of God XXII, ). There
is another issue in the region that, so far as I know, Augustine does not consider. Presumably the
solidarity in which we are to exist with our fellows continues into our perfected existence. But if
some souls are lost from Gods abiding Kingdom, then the absence of grief and the presence only
of joy, which is to characterize our perfected existence, can be achieved only by lack of awareness
by those who are rejoicing of those who are lost.

Inquiring about God

perfected existence eros is xed steadily on God. God, in contrast, has no

eros. Since there is in God no lack, God does not reach out to what would
fulll him. God reaches out exclusively in the mode of benevolence, not
in the mode of eros. But this dierence, though real, does nothing to
relieve the tension.
Are we to say, then, that in his picture of God as dwelling in blissful
non-suering apathy Augustine shows that, whatever be the qualications
he wishes to make for human beings, he still embraces the late antique,
Stoic notion of what constitutes perfect existence? Is that the bottom
line? Yes, I think we must indeed say this not only for Augustine but
also for the tradition in general. Shaped as they were by the philosophical traditions of late antiquity, it was inconceivable to the church fathers
that Gods existence should be anything other than perfect and that ideal
existence should be anything other than blissful. But though this must be
said, perhaps one or two more things must be said as well.
I have suggested that in his reections on how we human beings
should live in this present fallen condition of ours, Augustine not only
departed from the Stoics but even drove a splintering wedge into the
eudaemonistic framework of antiquity. Though we long for eudaemonia, we are not, while surrounded by evil, to pursue it. So long as evil is
present among us we are to cultivate suering over evil. I suggest that, in
addition to the grip on him of the late antique picture of ideal existence,
two additional considerations prevented Augustine from saying a similar
thing about God. For one thing, Augustine and the church fathers in
general believed that the longing of our hearts for eudaemonia will be
satised by sharing in the life of God a conviction that lies at the heart
of that long-enduring tradition of contemplative Christianity to which
Augustine helped give birth. But if the goal of our existence is happiness,
and if our ultimate happiness consists in sharing in the life of God, then
that life must itself be a life of peace and joy. If, upon entering into the
life of God, we there nd vexation and disturbance and suering, then
our own eudaemonia remains unattained. And second, it was agreed by
almost everyone in the tradition that God is immutable. Thus it was
impossible for them to say that the divine joy, in the sharing of which
lies our own eudaemonia, is a joy that God does not fully enjoy until
the coming of Gods perfected Kingdom. I suggest, in short, that what
leaped to Augustines eye when he surveyed the picture he had drawn
was this feature of it: in Gods eternal life is to be found the joy and
peace in the sharing of which lies our own true end. To that feature of
the picture, he was deeply attached.

Su ering love

It is possible, however, to be struck by quite a dierent aspect of the

picture; namely, God remains blissfully unperturbed while humanity
drowns in misery. When looked at in this way the pictures look is startlingly reversed, from the compelling to the grotesque. It is this grotesque
look of the picture that has forcefully been called to our attention by various contemporary thinkers as they have launched an attack on the traditional picture of the apathetic God with the foremost theologian, of
recent years, being Jrgen Moltmann.
One of the arguments, more purely theological than the others and
developed most elaborately by Moltmann, is that if one grants both that
Jesus suered and that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, then one
cannot avoid concluding that in Jesus suering, God was suering or
to speak more amply, that the second person of the Godhead was suffering. Moltmann reviews the struggles of the church fathers and the
early church councils to avoid this conclusion and judges them all to be
failures. In my discussion I shall have to neglect entirely this theological
argument for the suering of God.
Far and away the most commonly used argument in the contemporary
discussion is that if God truly loves Gods suering children, then God
will feel their misery with them. Gods love must include that mode of
love which is sympathy, Mitleiden. Perhaps the most vivid statement of
this argument was composed by an English writer, Maldwyn Hughes,
early in the last century in his book, What is Atonement? A Study in the
Passion of Christ. Hughes says:
We must choose whether or not we will accept the Christian revelation that
God is love. If we do, then we must accept the implications of the revelation
It is an entire misuse of words to call God our loving Father, if He is able to
view the waywardness and revelation of His children without being moved by

An important and highly inuential book in biblical studies has been Abraham J. Heschel,
The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, ). Heschel argues that the theology underlying the Old Testament prophets was that of the pathos of God. For biblical studies, see also
Terence E. Fretheim, The Su ering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, ). In between biblical studies and systematic theology is Kazoh Kitamori, Theology
of the Pain of God (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, ). Also see Dorothee Solle, Su ering
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, ). An important overview of the discussion is to be found in J.
K. Mozley, The Impassible God (Cambridge University Press, ). In addition to surveying the
discussions arming Gods passibility by a number of English theologians in the rst quarter
of this century, Mozley surveys the long tradition in Christian theology of divine impassibility from its beginnings. Also very useful is Richard E. Creel, Divine Impassibility (Cambridge
University Press, ).
Jrgen Moltmann, The Crucied God (New York: Harper & Row, ); and The Trinity and the
Kingdom (New York: Harper & Row, ).

Inquiring about God

grief and pity It is of the very nature of love to suer when its object suers
loss, whether inicted by itself or others. If the suering of God be denied, then
Christianity must discover a new terminology and must obliterate the statement
God is love from its Scriptures.

It is clear that between this view of the life of God and the Augustinian
view there is a deep clash of ideals: the ideal divine life for Augustine
was that of uninterrupted suering-free bliss; the ideal divine life for the
moderns is a life of sympathetic love. In eect the moderns insist that
the solidarity of grieving and rejoicing that Augustine recommends for
humanity on this earth is to embrace God as well. How can we adjudicate between these profoundly dierent visions?
Little will be gained by the moderns simply citing biblical passages
about God as loving. For Augustine and the other church fathers who
defended the non-suering apathy of God had not overlooked the fact that
the Bible speaks of God loving. And they too were committed to the teachings of the prophets and apostles. It was their conviction, however, that all
the statements about Gods love could be, and should be, interpreted in a
manner consistent with Gods apathy and Gods freedom from suering.
Augustines proposal became classic. Scripture everywhere witnesses
that God is pitiful, he says. But the pity of God diers from human pity.

Quoted in Mozley, The Impassible God , pp. . Compare these passages from Charles
Hartshorne: The lover is not merely the one who unwaveringly understands and tries to help;
the lover is just as emphatically the one who takes unto himself the varying joys and sorrows
of others, and whose own happiness is capable of alteration thereby Love is joy in the joy
(actual or expected) of another, and sorrow in the sorrow of another (Mans Vision of God [New
York: Harper & Brothers, ], , ). Sympathetic dependence is a sign of excellence and
waxes with every ascent in the scale of being. Joy calls for sympathetic joy, sorrow for sympathetic sorrow, as the most excellent possible forms of response to these states. The eminent form
of sympathetic dependence can only apply to deity, for this form cannot be less than an omniscient sympathy, which depends upon and is exactly colored by every nuance of joy or sorrow
anywhere in the world (The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God [New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, ], ).
See, for example, Anselm in Proslogion : How art Thou at once pitiful and impassible? For if
Thou art impassible, Thou dost not suer with man; if Thou dost not suer with man, Thy heart
is not wretched by compassion with the wretched, which is the meaning of being pitiful. But if
Thou are not pitiful, whence can the wretched gain so great comfort? How then art Thou, and
art Thou not pitiful, Lord, except that Thou art pitiful in respect of us, and not in respect of
Thyself? Truly Thou art so in respect of our feeling, and art not in respect of Th ine. For when
Thou lookest upon us in our wretchedness we feel the eect of Thy pity, Thou feelest not the
eect. And therefore Thou art pitiful, because Thou savest the wretched, and sparest the sinners
who belong to Thee; and Thou art not pitiful, because Thou art touched by no fellow-suering in
that wretchedness (from the translation by S. N. Deane [La Salle, IL: Open Court, ]). And
Aquinas in Summa Theologiae I, , , resp.: When certain human passions are predicated of the
Godhead metaphorically, this is done because of a likeness in the eect. Hence a thing that is
in us a sign of some passion is signied metaphorically in God under the name of that passion.

Su ering love

Human pity brings misery of heart; whereas who can sanely say that
God is touched by any misery? With regard to pity, if you take away
the compassion which involves a sharing of misery with whom you pity,
so that there remains the peaceful goodness of helping and freeing from
misery, some kind of knowledge of the divine pity is suggested. In
short: the love that we are to attribute to God is not the love of sympathy,
of Mitleiden, in which one shares the feelings of the other; it is the love of
well-doing, of benevolence, of agape.
And in general, as to the predication of the language of the emotions
to God: this must all be interpreted as attributing to God those e ects of
Gods agency that are similar to the eects of the perturbing emotions
in us:
Gods repentance does not follow upon error, the anger of God carries with it no
trace of a disturbed mind, nor his pity the wretched heart of a fellow-suerer
nor His jealousy any envy of mind. But by the repentance of God is meant the
change of things which lie within His power, unexpected by man; the anger of
God is His vengeance upon sin; the pity of God is the goodness of His help; the
jealousy of God is that providence whereby He does not allow those whom He
has in subjection to Himself to love with impunity what He forbids.

The conclusion is that when God repents He is not changed but He

brings about change; when He is angry He is not moved but He avenges;
when He pities He does not grieve but He liberates; when He is jealous
He is not pained but He causes pain.
So it is clear that the classical tradition of the apathetic God will not
come crashing down simply by observing that the Scriptures speak of
God as loving and then adding that if God loves Gods suering human
creatures, then Godself must suer. The tradition interpreted the biblical
passages in question as speaking of Gods non-suering benevolence. We
seem to be at an impasse.
Perhaps some advance can be made if we pause to reect a bit on the
nature of the emotions; for these, after all, are central in the discussion. Let
me here make use of the results of some probing discussions on the nature
of emotion to be found in the philosophical literature of the past fteen
years or so, results skillfully pulled together and amplied by William
Lyons in his book, Emotion. The upshot of the philosophical discussions

Thus with us it is usual for an angry man to punish, so that punishment becomes an expression
of anger. Therefore punishment itself is signied with anger, when anger is attributed to God
(from the translation by the English Dominicans [New York: Benzinger Brothers, ]).

Quoted in Mozley, The Impassible God , .

Ibid., . Ibid., .
William Lyons, Emotion (Cambridge University Press, ).

Inquiring about God

is decisively in favor of the so-called cognitive theory of emotion a

theory already prominent, in its essentials, among the ancients and the
medievals.
The cognitive theory holds, in the rst place, that every episode of emotion incorporates a belief that such and such a state of aairs has occurred
or is occurring or may well occur, along with an evaluation of that state of
aairs (proposition). Every emotion has, in that way, a doxastic/evaluative
component, and thereby a propositional content. Of course the belief that
the emotion incorporates may well be mistaken: emotions may be either
veridical or non-veridical. Suppose, for example (to take one of Lyons
illustrations) that I am afraid that the large dog approaching will attack
me. The proposition (state of aairs) that the large dog will attack me is
then the propositional content of the emotion; and a central component
of the emotion will be my believing and evaluating, be it negatively or
positively, that state of aairs.
The reference to evaluation is important and must not be lost from
view. The propositional content of an emotion is not only believed but
evaluated. If I were indierent to being attacked by the large dog, rather
than evaluating such an attack with distinct negativity, I would feel no
emotion in that regard. Or if I evaluated this state of aairs positively,
out of exhibitionism or a desire for martyrdom, I would feel not fear but
exhilaration.
The propositional content of an emotion, along with ones negative or
positive evaluation of that content, plays a central role in the identication
of an emotion. But it is not the whole of the emotion. There is no emotion
unless the belief and evaluation cause a physiological disturbance in the
person (the sympathetic nervous system being central here), along with
certain characteristic feelings that are, in part, awareness of ones physiological disturbance. What proves to be the case is that the physiological
disturbance and the accompanying feelings dier remarkably little from
one kind of emotion to another. One cannot, for example, dierentiate
anger from fear on this basis.
Lastly, many if not all emotions incorporate a characteristic appetitive component a desire to do something or other so as, for example,
to eliminate the state of aairs in question or to continue it, etc. The
person afraid that the large approaching dog will attack him is strongly
desirous of doing something to avert the attack though it may happen
that his physiological disturbance becomes so severe that, instead of running like a gazelle so as to implement his desire to avoid attack, he sinks
down helpless as a jellysh. It is the appetitive component in emotions

Su ering love

that accounts for the fact that emotions can function as motives for intentionally undertaken actions: a person may run away out of fear, may send
a blistering letter out of anger, etc.
Now if this schematic analysis of the nature of emotions is correct in
its main outlines, it follows directly that God has no emotions: no grief,
no anger, no fear, and so forth. For a person can have an emotion only
if that person is capable of being physiologically upset. And God, having
no physiology, is not so capable. I am not aware that Augustine ever used
this argument for Gods apatheia: he had other arguments. But Aquinas,
for example, makes explicit use of it in Summa Theologiae, Book I, ,
art. ; and in Summa contra Gentiles I, , . In the sense of pathos that we
have been using in our discussion, we can conclude that God is lacking
in pathos. The tradition was right: God is apathetic. God does not grieve,
neither in sympathy nor, as it were, on Gods own.
But we must not conclude from this that the contest is over and that
the ancients are victorious in their combat with the moderns. For though
the issue of whether God suers is regularly blurred with the issue of
whether God has passions, I suggest that suering is in fact a distinct
phenomenon from grief and the other negative emotions, and that
the conclusion that God has no passions still leaves open the question
whether God suers. It remains an open question whether Gods apathy
is a su ering apathy.
A person grieving over some loss is suering. It will be recalled that the
recognition that grief has a component of suering is what led Augustine
to conclude that God does not experience the passion of grief. But human
suering is by no means conned to emotional states. There is also the suffering caused by physical pain, the suering caused by mental depression,
the suering caused by the desperate wish that ones sexual orientation were
dierent from what it is, and so forth. Furthermore, it is often the case that
even when the emotional state of grief subsides, the suering continues.
What then are the connections among the belief that some loss has
occurred, the emotional state of grieving over that loss, and the suering comprised in that grieving? Well, clearly the cause of the suering
that one experiences in grieving is not the physiological disturbance or
the accompanying feelings. These are not to be thought of as one of the
sources of suering in our existence, on a par with physical pain and mental depression. For as we have seen, the actual feelings involved in grief
are little dierent from those in great joy. There are tears of joy as well as
tears of grief. And it is worth recalling Augustines observation that the
grieving person may even nd sweetness in the tears of his grief.

Inquiring about God

One is tempted to conclude, then, that the cause of the suering that
one experiences when grieving is the event over which one is grieving: the
death, the maiming, the defeat, whatever. But this too cannot be correct. For there may be no such event! One may believe that the death,
the maiming, the defeat, occurred when it did not. There may in fact be
no event such that one grieves over it and it caused ones grief. And conversely, if some event occurred but one does not believe it did, the event
causes no grief.
The conclusion must be, I think, that the cause of ones suering, when
grieving over loss, is simply ones believing that a loss occurred. For whether
or not a loss of the sort in question occurred, the believing denitely
exists. When someone suers from physical pain, eliminating the pain
eliminates the suering. When someone suers over mental depression,
getting rid of the depression gets rid of the suering. So too, the suering
one experiences when grieving over loss is eliminated by elimination of
the belief that the loss occurred. When the prodigal son, thought to be
dead, returns home alive, the fathers tears of grief are transmuted into
tears of joy. Physical pain and mental depression and unsatised desire
cause suering. But so also do certain of our ways of representing reality.
And it makes no dierence whether those ways be faithful to reality or
unfaithful veridical or non-veridical.
We speak naturally of the suering caused by pain, of the suering
caused by mental depression, etc. But we must not think of the connection between some facet of our experience, on the one hand, and
joy or suering, on the other, as the connection of ecient causality.
The suering caused by pain is not some distinct sensation caused by
the pain sensation. Suering and joy are, as it were, adverbial modiers of the states and events of consciousness. Pain and depression and
the belief that someone we love has died are episodes of consciousness
that occur sueringly. The experience of art and the taste of good food
and the belief that one of our projects has succeeded are episodes of
consciousness that occur joyfully. A fundamental fact of consciousness
is that the events of consciousness do not all occur indierently. Some
occur unpleasantly, on a continuum all the way to suering; some occur
pleasantly, on a continuum all the way to joy; and some, indeed, occur
in neither mode.
Suering, when veridical, is an existential No-saying to something
in reality. With ones very existence one says No to the pain, No to
the mental depression. But when that state of consciousness that causes
the grief is one that has a propositional content, then that to which one

Su ering love

existentially says No pulls apart from the cause of the suering. One
existentially says No to the loss, not to the believing; No to the desires
being unfullled, not to the desiring. (The suering may of course lead
one to say No to the desire itself.)
Earlier we spoke of emotions as including an evaluative component.
But quite clearly there is no emotion if we just coolly evaluate something
as meeting or not meeting some criterion that we happen to embrace. The
evaluation must be an existential valuing of which we have just now been
speaking. At the core of an emotion will be our valuing of the facts and
supposed facts of the world. And that valuing may continue even though
the emotion subsides.
One more observation is relevant: the fact that suering consists of the
(intensely) aversive occurrence of some state or event of consciousness is
compatible with the fact that often we choose to do what we anticipate
will cause us suering. We choose the surgery knowing that pain will follow. In this there is nothing complex or mysterious. To understand it, we
need only remind ourselves that, as means to achieving what one desires,
one may do that which (as such) one does not desire. Truly mysterious,
however, is the fact that one may get joy out of su ering as, for example,
the person of intense religiosity who shares in the suerings of Christ and
counts it all joy. In such a case, the person joyfully experiences his sufferingly experiencing pain.
And now back to the issue: Let us suppose that God knows what
transpires in this world. The question before us then is whether some of
that knowledge is sueringly experienced and some of it joyfully. And
notice that the issue of whether God sueringly experiences some of what
transpires in this world does indeed join hands with whether God also
experiences some of it joyfully. Unless it be the case that everything in
this world is good to the eye of God or everything bad, whatever be the
answer we give to one of these questions must also be the answer we give
to the other.
Our answer must be postponed for a few pages, however, so as to introduce into the discussion a new and distinct line of thought, also embraced
with near unanimity by the patristics and medievals, leading to the same
conclusion as the perfection argument that we have thus far considered.
This additional argument for the conclusion that God experiences neither
passions nor suering may be called the ontological argument. The fact
that the perfection argument and the ontological argument join to yield
the same result is what made the tradition of Gods non-suering apathy
so enormously powerful. There is more that divides the moderns from

Inquiring about God

the ancients than a clash of moral ideals though to this more, the
moderns rarely give any attention.
Suppose that God suered on account of the pain experienced by the
people in Stalins Gulag camps and of the evil in the heart of Stalin who
put them there. Then it would be the case that what one human being
did, and what happened to other human beings, would determine the
quality of Gods life. Stalins acting as he did would bring about Gods
suering awareness of the evil in Stalins heart. The victims experience of
pain would bring about Gods suering knowledge of their pain. Or to
take another example: if God suered on account of humanitys destructive impact upon the earth, then again what transpires in the world would
determine the quality of Gods life.
But to imagine that what transpires in the world could in this way
determine the quality of Gods life is to bump up against an assumption that, ever since Plotinus, has been deeper than any other in classical
Christian theology; namely, the assumption that God is unconditioned.
The Supreme, says Plotinus, can neither derive its being nor the quality
of its being. God Himself, therefore, is what He is, self-related, selftending; otherwise He becomes outward-tending, other-seeking He
who cannot but be wholly self-poised.
On most Christian theologians this deliverance of Plotinus has had
the grip of obvious and fundamental truth. From it has been extracted a
truly astonishing list of conclusions: that God is simple, thus having no
nature as we would nowadays understand having a nature; that God is
immutable; that God is eternal; that God is entirely lacking in potentialities, thus being pure act; that God exists necessarily, since Gods essence
and Gods existence are identical; that no predicate correctly predicated
of something other than God can with the same sense be correctly predicated of God; and to break o the listing that God has no passions.
Of course, these conclusions were not all derived directly from Gods status as unconditioned. Chains of argument were used. John of Damascus,
for example, takes it that God is without ux because He is passionless
and incorporeal, and that he is by nature passionless since he is simple

Enneads VI, viii, . I use the edition translated by A. W. Armstrong (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, ).
In God everlasting (chapter in this present volume), I discuss the issue of whether
God is eternal and immutable. Alvin Plantinga, in Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee,
WI: Marquette University Press, ), has discussed another dimension of the Plotinian
concept of God namely, the contention that God has no properties, in particular, no
nature.

Su ering love

and uncompound. But the classic argument for Gods simplicity, in

turn, came from Plotinus, whose key premise was that reality must comprise a being that is entirely unconditioned.
Beyond a doubt it was Aquinas who, after Plotinus, worked out most
profoundly the implications of the assumption that God is the unconditioned condition of everything not identical with Godself. No doubt he
saw it as rendering the biblical teaching of Gods sovereignty. At the same
time it was he who struggled most intensely to construe the teachings of
the Scriptures as a whole in the light of this assumption and its implications. Let us, then, follow him in his thought.
In Summa contra Gentiles I, , , Aquinas says that the passion of sorrow or pain has for its subject the already present evil, just as the object
of joy is the good present and possessed. Sorrow and pain, therefore, of
their very nature cannot be found in God. No doubt in this particular
formulation Aquinas is alluding to the perfection argument. But what
has already brought him to this conclusion is an elaborate development of
the ontological argument and its ramications.
Aquinas has just argued that God has no passions at all. And in
addition to oering as ground for this conclusion that God lacks the
sensitive appetites and the bodily physiology necessary for experiencing passions (ScG I, , ), he argued, more relevantly to our purposes here, that in every passion of the appetite the patient is somehow
drawn out of his usual, calm, or connatural disposition. But it is not
possible for God to be somehow drawn outside His natural condition,

John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith I, in Philip Scha and Henry Wace, eds.,
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. IX (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, ). As to what
he means by passion, John says this in Exposition II, :
Passion is a sensible activity of the appetitive faculty, depending on the presentation to the
mind of something good or bad. Or in other words, passion is an irrational activity of the soul,
resulting from the notion of something good or bad. For the notion of something good results
in desire, and the notion of something bad results in anger. But passion considered as a class,
that is, passion in general, is dened as a movement in one thing caused by another.

My citations from the Summa contra Gentiles are from the version translated by Anton Pegis
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, ). Citations from the Summa Theologiae
are from the English Dominican translation (New York: Benzinger Brothers, ). References
to both these works are given parenthetically in the text.
Aquinas uses the perfection argument more explicitly in Summa Theologiae I, , , . It is interesting to note that one of Augustines reasons for regarding our human emotions as part of our
present inrmity is that the being acted upon that they involve is something from which we
should look forward to being delivered in our perfected existence: We are often over-pressed by
our emotions. A laudable desire of charity may move us: yet shall we weep whether we will or
not. For we have them by our human inrmity, but so had not Christ; for He had His inrmity
itself from His own power (City of God XIV, ).

Inquiring about God

since He is absolutely immutable, as has been shown (ScG I, , ).

Th is argument, of course, militates as much against Gods suering as
against Gods passion.
But if God cannot be drawn outside his natural condition of unalloyed abiding bliss, does it not follow that God is either ignorant of the
suering and evil that transpire in the life of Gods human creatures, or
is indierent to their plight? Yet the former is incompatible with Gods
omniscience. And as to the latter, how would indierence to the plight of
humanity be compatible with the love of God?
Though God does not sorrow over evil, yet God knows evil, says
Aquinas. To understand in what way Aquinas thinks this to be true, we
must rst understand in what way, as he sees it, God knows anything at
all other than Godself.
It must be granted, says Aquinas, that primarily and essentially God
knows only Himself. For this conclusion, Aquinas gives several arguments, most of which consist in spinning out the implications of the doctrine of divine simplicity. He says, for example, that the operations of
the intellect are distinguished according to their objects. If, then, God
understands Himself and something other than Himself as the principal
object, He will have several intellectual operations. Therefore either His
essence will be divided into several parts, or He will have an intellectual operation that is not his substance. Both of these positions have been
proved to be impossible (ScG I, , ).
From this argument it would seem to follow not merely that God primarily and essentially knows only Godself but that, without qualication, God knows only Godself. Yet Aquinas immediately goes on to argue
that God understands things other than Himself. His reason is that an
eect is adequately known when its cause is known. So we are said to
know each thing when we know the cause [Aristotle]. But God Himself
is through His essence the cause of being for other things. Since He has a
most full knowledge of His essence, we must posit that God also knows
other things (ScG I, , ). Thus it is simply in knowing Gods own simple undierentiated self that God knows all other things on the two
principles that God is the cause of all things other than Godself, and that
in knowing a things cause one knows the thing.

Cf. ScG I, , : In knowing His essence, God knows other things in the same way as an eect
is known through a knowledge of the cause. By knowing his essence, therefore, God knows all
things to which his causality extends. And ScG I, , : God knows things not by receiving
anything from them, but, rather, by exercising His causality on them.

Su ering love

And how is God the cause of other things? God is the cause by virtue
of Gods will, says Aquinas. Yet it must be granted that the principal
object of the divine will is the divine essence. For if we allowed that God
directly willed things other than Godself, the principle of divine simplicity would again be violated. If God should principally will something other than Himself, it will follow that something other is the cause
of His willing. But His willing is His being, as has been shown. Hence,
something other will be the cause of His being which is contrary to the
nature of the rst being (ScG I, , ).
But if the divine self is the principal object of the divine will, how
does God cause other things? In Summa contra Gentiles I, , , Aquinas
says that in every case of willing something the principle object is just
the ultimate end for which the thing is willed. But that is misleading for
the case before us. We are not to think of God as willing other things as
means to the end of Godself. Rather, Aquinas thought is this: God wills
and loves His essence for its own sake. Now the things that we love for
their own sake we want to be most perfect, and always to become better
and be multiplied as much as possible. But the divine essence cannot be
increased or multiplied in itself. There is only one way in which the divine
self can be enriched or enhanced, namely, by way of there being other entities that resemble it. The divine essence can be multiplied solely according
to its likeness, which is participated by many, says Aquinas. It is in that
way, then, that in willing and loving His own essence and perfection
God wills the multitude of things. If we look at the multitude of beings
other than God and ask, what is the ultimate ground of their existence,
our answer is this pair of phenomena: that this whole array of beings, each
in its own way and degree resembling God (including their being ordered
to God as their end) is a sort of enhancement of the divine perfection;
and that God wills the enhancement of Gods own self.
We have been looking at Aquinas construal of Gods knowing and
willing of things other than Godself. Before we move on we should also
consider his construal of the love of God for things other than Godself,
since all the relevant phenomena are already before us. God wills Godself.
Now to will something is perforce to regard it as good; the understood

Also the principle of perfection would be violated: If the principal object of the divine will
be other than the divine essence, it will follow that there is something higher than the divine will
moving it. The contrary of this is apparent from what has been said (ScG I, , ).
And always, in addition, there was this Plotinian thought haunting medieval reections on
Gods creation: That which does not want to generate suces more to itself in beauty, but
that which desires to create wants to create beauty because of a lack and is not self-sucient
(Plotinus, Enneads III, , ).

Inquiring about God

good is the proper object of the will, the understood good is, as such,
willed (ScG I, , ). And in turn, it belongs properly to the nature of
love, that the lover wills the good of the one he loves (ScG I, , ). But
we have also found it appropriate, says Aquinas, to speak of God as willing other things. Now we have just seen that it is a necessary truth about
willing that one wills what one judges good. So God wills the good of
those other things. And since, as we have also seen, to love something is
to will the good of the thing Aquinas, be it noted, construes love simply
as benevolence it follows straightforwardly that God loves things other
than Godself.
But now, is it not stretching the sense of the words beyond their breaking point to call knowledge of other things those phenomena in the
Plotinian God to which Aquinas applies that phrase; and so, similarly,
for willing of other things and loving of other things? Consider: God
knows Godself, and God is the cause of all things other than Godself: this
pair of phenomena is what Aquinas calls Gods knowing of things other
than Godself, on the principle that to know the cause of a thing is to know
the thing. And consider: God wills Gods perfection, and the ensemble of things other than God enhances Gods perfection by resembling
God: this pair of phenomena Aquinas calls Gods willing of things other
than Godself. He furthermore proposes calling this last pair of phenomena, Gods loving of things other than Godself, on the grounds that one
only wills what one regards as good, and that to love something is to will
its good. But is not the former of these so distant from the knowledge of
things as not to deserve the title? And is not the latter so distant from the
intentional making and the loving of things as also not to deserve those
titles? What is missing throughout is any awareness of, any acquaintance
with, things other than Godself by God. God has no concept nor anything like a concept of anything other than Godself. Our intellect knows
singular things through singular species that are proper and diverse, says
Aquinas. By acquiring such singular species, we actualize our potentials for knowledge. Not so for the divine intellect. If it knew something

In ST I, , , resp., Aquinas argument would seem to run just a bit dierently: God wills
the existence of all things; and since a things existence is good, God wills the existence of all
things. But to love something is to will good to that thing. Hence God loves all things. This is
the text: God loves all existing things. For all existing things, in so far as they exist, are good,
since the existence of a thing is itself a good; and likewise, whatever perfection it possesses. Now
it has been shown above that Gods will is the cause of all things. It must needs be, therefore,
as it is willed by God. To every existing thing, then, God wills some good. Hence, since to love
anything is nothing else than to will good to that thing, it is manifest that God loves everything
that exists.

Su ering love

through a species that is not itself, it would necessarily follow that its
proportion to that species would be as the proportion of potency to act.
God must therefore understand solely through the species that is his own
essence (ScG I, , ). (Aquinas might, of course, have reached the
same conclusion from the premise of Gods simplicity.)
It appears that Aquinas himself regarded the point to which I have
objected as one of the weak points in his theory; for when he returned
to the topic of Gods knowledge in his later work, Summa Theologiae, he
reworked his thought on the topic of whether God knows things other
than himself by proper knowledge? (ST I, , ). He still holds, of course,
that God has a proper and not merely a general knowledge of things other
than Godself, his reason being that to know a thing in general and not
in particular, is to have an imperfect knowledge of it (resp.). But now he
attempts in a somewhat dierent way than before to meet the challenge
of explaining how it can be that the Plotinian God has a proper knowledge of things other than Godself.
Everything whatsoever other than God bears to God a unique relation
or resemblance with respect to its perfections. Not only do human beings,
for example, resemble God with respect to their perfections in a way different from horses, but also Socrates resembles God with respect to his
perfections in a way distinct from Plato. Furthermore, a things unique
resemblance to God can be thought of as the nature of the thing. The
nature proper to each thing consists in some degree of participation in
the divine perfection (ibid.). But the multiplicity of ways in which God
can be resembled is, in turn, a necessary and not an accidental feature of
God. His essence contains the similitude of things other than Himself
(ST I, , , resp.). But if so, then God could not be said to know Himself
perfectly unless He knew all the ways in which His own perfection can
be shared by others (a. , resp.). Hence, says Aquinas, it is manifest that
God knows all things with proper knowledge, in their distinction from
each other (ibid.).
I think it is clear, however, that this argument will not do. Aquinas
assumes that to know the proper nature of a thing is to know the thing.
Perhaps we can grant that assumption though, of course, its truth
depends on how we construe proper nature. He also assumes that a
things particular way of resembling God constitutes the nature of the
thing. That seems more controversial; but let us not contest the matter.
He further assumes, in classic Chain of Being fashion, that for every possible mode of resemblance to God, there is (or was, or will be) something
that actually bears that mode of resemblance to God. That assumption is

Inquiring about God

even more controversial; but let us still not boggle. It is because of these
three assumptions that Aquinas can say that in Gods knowing of all the
particular ways in which Gods perfection can be shared, God knows
all the particular ways in which it is in fact shared; and in Gods knowing of all the particular ways in which it is in fact shared, God knows
all the particular things of the world. Let us, on this occasion, content
ourselves with questioning Aquinas on the move that he makes before
these three: the move from Gods knowledge of Gods essence to Gods
knowledge of the distinct and multiple ways in which things can resemble Gods essence.
Now it is indeed true that the ways in which a thing can be resembled
belong to its essence. But it is not sucient for Aquinas purposes to hold
that a perfect knowledge of Gods essence implies a knowledge of all the
ways in which God can be resembled. The demands of the simplicity doctrine are such that he must say that Gods knowing of Gods essence just
is Gods knowing of the various ways in which God can be resembled.
Perhaps, indeed, the demands of the simplicity doctrine are even more
stringent than that. For someone might contend that ones knowledge of
x may be identical with ones knowledge of y even though x is not identical with y. But if that is indeed true, then what must be said is that the
doctrine of divine simplicity requires not only that Gods knowing is single but also that what God knows is single.
But now consider some one of the ways in which God can be resembled. Is that way of resemblance identical with Gods essence? Surely not.
For Aquinas identies a way of resembling God with the nature of some
thing other than God; and if such a way of resembling was identical with
Gods essence, the nature of some thing other than God would be identical with Gods essence from which it would follow that that thing
that was other than God was identical with God. The conclusion must be
that Aquinas adherence to the simplicity doctrine makes untenable this
attempt at explaining how God knows things other than Godself.
Aquinas struggle to nd in the Plotinian God something that might
appropriately be called knowledge of other things becomes even more
transparently a struggle when it comes to Gods knowledge of evil. I will
not here rehearse all his arguments; he gives some seven of them. But
the basic line of thought running through all of them is evident from
the rst: When a good is known, the opposite evil is known. But God
knows all particular goods, to which evils are opposed. Therefore God
knows evils (ST I, , ). God, Aquinas would say, knows that particular
human evil that is blindness because God knows that particular good

Su ering love

that is human sight to which this evil of blindness is opposed. Now it is

obscure in Aquinas argument whether he means to say that God knows,
of some particular human being, that she enjoys the good that is sight, or
whether he means to say that God just knows abstractly what is the good
that is human sight. But suppose he means the former. At most what
can be said is that anyone who has such knowledge will also know what
blindness is. That leaves such a person well short of knowing, say, that
some particular elderly woman has gone blind which is what all of us
would regard as knowing one of the actual evils of our world.
The conclusion is unavoidable: Aquinas does not nd, in the Plotinian
God, anything that could appropriately be called knowing the su ering
and evil that transpire in our world. But if God does not know the suffering and evil that transpire in our world, then God does not su eringly
know it. Now suppose we assume, as seems reasonable, that Aquinas has
done as well as can be done by way of nding in the Plotinian God something that could be called knowledge of things other than Godself and
knowledge of the suering and evil of our world. Then we must conclude that on the Plotinian concept of God, God does indeed not have a
suering awareness of the world. God does not have such an awareness
because God does not have an awareness of the world at all.
So we are faced with a choice. If one adopts the Plotinian concept of
God, the conclusion falls out that God does not suer, and, of course,
does not have passions. But one gets the conclusion by paying the price of
removing from God all knowledge of, and love for, the particular things of
this world. The question, then, is whether this price is too high. Virtually
the entire Christian tradition would say it is. The Christian cannot surrender the conviction that God knows and loves Gods creation. Or to put it
dierently: to pay the price charged by the Plotinian concept of God is to
move away from Christianity toward some other form of religion.
We are back to where we were: Does God sueringly experience what
transpires in the world? The tradition said that God does not. The moderns say that God does specically, that God sueringly experiences our
suering. Both parties agree that God loves the world. But the tradition
held that God loves only in the mode of benevolence; it proposed construing all the biblical passages in the light of that conviction. The moderns

So when Aquinas speaks of Gods mercy (misericordia), he has no choice but to turn it into mere
benevolence: Mercy is especially to be attributed to God, provided it be considered in its eect,
but not as an aection to passion. In proof of which it must be observed that a person is said to
be merciful [misericors] as being, so to speak, sorrowful at heart [miserum cor]; in other words, as
being aected with sorrow at the misery of another as though it were his own. Hence it follows

Inquiring about God

insist that Gods love includes love in the mode of sympathy. The moderns paint in attractive colors a moral ideal that is an alternative to that
of the tradition, and point to various biblical passages speaking of Gods
suering love passages that the tradition, for centuries, has construed
in its own way. The tradition, for its part, oered essentially two lines of
defense. It argued that the attribution of emotions and suering to God
was incompatible with Gods unconditionedness, an argument that, so
we have concluded, should be rejected. And second, it oered a pair of
what it took to be obvious truths: that suering is incompatible with ideal
existence, and that Gods existence is immutably ideal. We saw that the
supposition that those truths are obvious was endangered in Augustines
case by his insistence that we human beings are to cultivate a solidarity of
grieving over evil and rejoicing over repentance. But we did not ourselves
oer any argument directly against those supposed truths.
How can we advance from here? Perhaps by looking more intently
than we have thus far at that claim of the tradition that Gods love consists exclusively of benevolence. Benevolence in God was understood as
Gods steady disposition to do good to Gods creatures. And since as long
as there are creatures no matter what their condition there is scope
for Gods exercise of that disposition, and since Gods exercise of that disposition is never frustrated, God endlessly takes joy in this dimension of
Godself. God does not take joy let us carefully note in Gods awareness of the condition of Gods creatures. God does not delight in beholding the creaturely good that God has brought about. If that were the case,
Gods joy would be conditional on the state of things other than Godself.
What God joyfully experiences is simply Gods own exercise of benevolence. Gods awareness of our plunge into sin and suering causes God no
disturbance; Gods awareness of the arrival of Gods perfected Kingdom
will likewise give God no joy. For no matter what the state of the world,
there is room for Gods successful exercise of Gods steady disposition to
do good; and it is in that exercise that God nds delight.
An analogue that comes to mind is that of a professional health-care
specialist. Perhaps when rst she entered her profession she was disturbed
by the pain and limping and death she saw. But that is now over. Now
she is neither perturbed nor delighted by the condition of the people that
she sees. What gives her delight is just her inner awareness of her own
that he endeavors to dispel the misery of this other, as if it were his; and this is the eect of
mercy. To sorrow therefore, over the misery of others does not belong to God; but it does most
properly belong to Him to dispel that misery, whatever be the eect we call misery (ST I, , ,
resp.).

Su ering love

well-doing. And always she nds scope for well-doing so long, of course,
as she has clients. To those who are healthy she gives reassuring advice
on health maintenance. To those who are ill she dispenses medicine and
surgery. But it makes no dierence to her whether or not her advice maintains the health of the healthy and whether or not her proered concoctions and cuttings cure the illness of the ill. What makes a dierence is
just her steadiness in well-doing; in this and in this alone she nds her
delight. If it falls within her competence she will, of course, cooperate in
pursuing the elimination of smallpox; that is doing good. But should the
news arrive of its elimination, she will not join the party; she has all along
been celebrating the only thing she nds worth celebrating namely, her
own well-doing. She is a Stoic sage in the modern world.
I daresay that most of us nd such a person thoroughly repugnant;
that shows how far we are from the mentality of many of the intellectuals in the world of late antiquity. But beyond giving vent to our feelings
of repugnance, let us consider whether the picture I have drawn is even
coherent. Though this person neither rejoices nor suers over anything in
the condition of her patients, nonetheless she rejoices in her own doing
of good. But what then does she take as good ? What does she value? The
health of her patients, one would suppose. Why otherwise would she give
advice to the one on how to maintain his health, and chemicals to the
other to recover his, and all the while rejoice, on account of thus acting,
in her own doing of good? But if she does indeed value the health of her
patients, then perforce she will also be glad over its presence and disturbed by its absence (when she knows about these). Yet we have pictured
her as neither happy nor disturbed by anything other than her own welldoing. Have we not described what cannot be?
Perhaps in his description of moral action that great Stoic philosopher
of the modern world, Immanuel Kant, can be of help to us here. In the
moral dimension of our existence, the only thing good in itself is a good
will, said Kant. Yet, of course, the moral person will do such things as
act to advance the health of others. Insofar as she acts morally, however,
she does not do so because her awareness of health in people gives her
delight and her awareness of illness proves disturbing. She may indeed be
so constituted that she does thus value health and sickness in others and
act thereon. But that is no moral credit to her. To be moral she must act
not out of delight over health nor out of disturbance over illness but out
of duty. She must act on some rule specifying what one ought to do in her
sort of situation a rule to which, by following it, she accords respect.
That is what it is to value a good will: to act out of respect for the moral

Inquiring about God

law rather than out of ones natural likings and dislikings, rejoicings and
grievings. And the moral person is the person who, wherever relevant,
thus values the goodness of her will. Her valuing of that will mean, when
her will is in fact good, that she will delight therein. But if she acts out of
a desire to delight in having a good will, that too is not moral action; she
must act out of respect for the moral law.
Suppose then that our health-care specialist values the goodness of her
will and acts thereon by dutifully seeking to advance the health of her
patients delighting in thus acting. She may or may not also value the
health of her patients, being disturbed by its absence and delighted by
its presence. But if she does not in that way value her patients health,
that does not in any way militate against her delighting in her own welldoing.
We have here, then, a way of understanding how it can be that God
delights in Gods doing good to human beings without either delighting
in, or being disturbed by, the human condition. God acts out of duty.
Thus acting, God values Gods own good will without valuing anything
in Gods creation. If we interpret Gods benevolence as Gods acting out
of duty, then the traditional picture becomes coherent.
But of course it buys this coherence at great price. For to think thus of
God is to produce conict at a very deep level indeed with the Christian
Scriptures. These tell us that it is not out of duty but out of love that God
blesses us, not out of obligation but out of grace that God delivers us. To
construe Gods love as purely benevolence and to construe Gods benevolence along Kantian-Stoic lines as Gods acting out of duty, is to be left
without Gods love.
So we are back with the model in which God values things other than
Gods own good will values positively some of the events and conditions in Gods creation, and values negatively others. To act out of love
toward something other than oneself is to value that thing and certain
states of that thing. And on this point it matters not whether the love be
erotic or agapic. If one rejects the duty-model of Gods action, then the
biblical speech about Gods prizing of justice and shalom in Gods creation will have to be taken at face value and not construed as meaning that
God has a duty to work for justice and shalom.
These reections place us in a position to see better than we could
before the cause of tension in Augustines thought. Augustine urged us
to value the religious condition of our fellow human beings. But, as we
saw, he does not hold that our eros is to be attached to our fellows. Rather
it was his assumption that the religious condition of our fellow human

Su ering love

beings has its own mode of value, distinct from the mode of value that
those things have for us that satisfy our need, our eros. We are to love
our fellow human beings without being attached to them. But if we are
indeed to value in this non-erotic way the religious condition of our fellows, why would God not do so as well? Or conversely, if God does not
do so, why is it nonetheless appropriate for us to do so? The tension in
Augustines thought is due to the fact that our (non-erotic) valuing and
Gods valuing arbitrarily part ways.
In my argument I have assumed that if, believing some state of aairs
to be occurring, one values that occurrence, whether negatively or positively, then one is correspondingly delighted or disturbed. I have assumed
that ones believing is then either a delightedly believing or a disturbedly
believing, an avertive believing or an advertive believing. Some might
question this assumption. Can valuing not be existentially colorless? Can
God not value justice and shalom in Gods creation while yet Gods awareness of its presence gives God not a icker of delight nor Gods awareness
of its absence a twinge of unhappiness? My answer is that I do not know
how to envisage such a possibility. The Kantian duty-model gives us a way
of understanding how one might act intentionally to bring about some
state of aairs without valuing that state of aairs. But even Kant, along
with the ancient Stoics, assumed that valuing displays itself in the aversive
and adversive qualities of our experience. It is true, of course, that one can
evaluate things coolly and impartially. One can work in a farmers shed
evaluating potatoes without valuing positively those to which one gives
top grade or negatively those that one tosses out. But that is a dierent
matter. Evaluating is not valuing.
I come then to this conclusion: the fact that the biblical writers speak
of God as rejoicing and suering over the state of the creation is not a
supercial eliminable feature of their speech. It expresses themes deeply
embedded in the biblical vision. Gods love for this world is a rejoicing
and suering love. The picture of God as a Stoic sage, ever blissful and
non-suering, is in deep conict with the biblical picture.

For a full consideration of our topic, there is an argument of Charles Hartshorne which would
have to be considered. He argues that Gods benevolence must itself be understood as a suering
love or strictly speaking, as a love that yields suering. For God in Gods benevolence wants
human creatures to be happy. Yet so often they are not. God suers, then, from the frustration
of Gods benevolent intention. Th is, of course, is something that the tradition would never have
granted: that Gods benevolent intention could be frustrated. Theologians, says Hartshorne:
sought to maintain a distinction between love as desire, with an element of possible gain or
loss to the self, and love as purely altruistic benevolence; or again between sensuous and spiritual love, eros and agape. Benevolence is desire for the welfare of others. Of course it

Inquiring about God

But are we entitled to say that it is a su ering love, someone may ask a
love prompted by a su ering awareness of what goes on in the world? An
unhappy awareness, Yes; but does it reach all the way to suering?
What the Christian story says is that God the Father, out of love
for human beings, delivered Gods only begotten Son to the suering, abandonment, and death of the cross. In the light of that, I think
it grotesque to suggest that Gods valuing of our human predicament
was so mildly negative as to cause God no suering. But in any case,
nothing of substance hangs on degrees. The claim of the tradition was
that Gods knowledge of the world causes God no vexation at all , no
disturbance, no unhappiness. We have found reason to think that that
claim is false.
In closing let me observe that if we agree that God both sueringly and
joyfully experiences this world of ours and of Gods, then at once there
comes to mind a question that the tradition never asked, namely: What
in our world causes God suering and what in it causes God joy? And
then at once there also comes to mind a vision of the relation between our
suering and joy and Gods suering and joy that is profoundly dierent
from that to be found in the tradition. In the tradition the relation was
simply that here in this life we long to share in that uninterrupted bliss
that God enjoys from eternity. What now comes to mind instead is the
vision of aligning ourselves with Gods suering and with Gods joy: of
delighting over that which is such that Gods awareness of our delight
gives God delight and of suering over that which is such that Gods
awareness of our suering causes God suering.
The embrace of this new vision will then lead us to look once again at
the content of the Augustinian vision, according to which the only thing
in our earthly lives of sucient worth to merit suering is the religious
condition of our souls. The company of friends and relatives is to become
must be a superrationally enlightened, an all-comprehending, never wearying desire for others good, that is attributed to God. But still desire, so far as that means partial dependence for
extent of happiness upon the happiness of others Lincolns desire that the slaves might be
free was not less desire because it was spiritual, or less spiritual because it was desire that is, a
wish, capable of being painfully disappointed or happily fullled.
To hold that God wills or purposes human welfare, but is absolutely untouched by the
realization or non-realization of this or that portion of the purposed goal (due, for instance, to
human sins or unfortunate use of free will), seems just non-sense.
Does this not introduce the tragedy of unful lled desire into God? Yes, it does just that.
(Charles Hartshorne, Mans Vision of God, , , )
Compare Fretheim, in Su ering of God , p. : In terms of Jeremiah , we need to speak in some
sense of a temporary failure in what God has attempted to do in the world. Because of this, the
mourners should take up a lamentation for God as well.

Su ering love

to us as kiwi fruit that we enjoy while we have it but whose disappearance

causes us no suering. And so too for whatever else one wants to mention justice, for example. We are to grieve over the souls of those who
perpetrate injustice with evil heart; but over the violation of our rights as
such we are not to grieve. Our rights we are to enjoy if we have them, but
not grieve over if we do not.
In short, what one nds in Augustine and in that long tradition of
Christian piety that he helped to shape is a radical and comprehensive
lowering of the worth of the things of this world. In the presence of
all those griefs that ensue from the destruction of that which we love,
Augustine pronounces a No to the attachments rather than a No to
the destruction not a No to death but a No to love of what is subject to death. Thereby he also pronounces a Not much concerning the
worth of the things loved. Nothing in this world has worth enough to
merit an attachment that carries the potential of grief nothing except
the religious state of souls. The state of my childs soul is worth suering
love; the childs company is not.
But there is another way to go. To some of the things in this world one
can pay the tribute of recognizing in them worth sucient to merit a love
that plunges one into suering upon their destruction. In ones love one
can say a Yes to the worth of persons or things and in ones suering a
No to their destruction. To friends and relatives one can pay the tribute
of loving them enough to suer upon their death. To justice among ones
people one can pay the tribute of loving it enough to suer upon its tyrannical denial. To the delights of music and voice and birdsong one can pay
the tribute of loving them enough to suer upon going deaf. One can pay
to persons and things the existential tribute of suering love. The world
is better, says Richard Swinburne in a ne passage,
if agents pay proper tribute to losses and failures, if they are sad at the failure
of their endeavours, mourn for the death of a child, are angry at the seduction
of a wife, and so on. Such emotions involve suering and anguish, but in having such proper feelings a man shows his respect to himself and others. A man
who feels no grief at the death of his child or the seduction of his wife is rightly
branded by us as insensitive, for he has failed to pay the proper tribute of feeling to others, to show in his feeling how much he values them, and thereby

Love [Eros] is an activity of soul reaching out after good, says Plotinus in Enneads III, , .
Augustine would agree. His argument is that the things of this world do not have sucient good
to be worth reaching out after or strictly, the good they have does not outweigh the grief they
cause suciently to make it worth reaching out after them.

Inquiring about God

failed to value them properly for valuing them properly involves having proper
reactions of feeling to their loss.

Suering is an essential element in that mode of life that says not only
No to the misery of our world but Yes to its glories.
And if one does pay to friends and relatives the tribute of a love that
may suer, then also one will struggle to prolong their lives rather than
to reorient a self cast into suering by the snung out of their lives. If
one does pay to justice among ones people the tribute of a love that may
suer, then also one will struggle to overthrow the tyrant rather than to
reconstruct ones self so as to be content under tyranny. Suering contributes to changing the world. Suering must sometimes be cultivated. We
are indeed to live in a solidarity of grieving and rejoicing but of grieving and rejoicing over the absence and presence of that mode of human
ourishing that the biblical writers call shalom; not just over the religious
condition of our souls.
This, I said, was a dierent way to go the way of No to death rather
than to love of that which dies, the way of No to injustice rather than
to love of justice, the way of No to poverty rather than to the struggle
to alleviate poverty and yes, the way of No to our distance from God
rather than to love of God. It is also, in my judgment, a better way. For it
is in line with Gods suering and with Gods joy. Instead of loving only
God we will love what God loves, including God. For it is in the presence
of justice and shalom among Gods human creatures that God delights,
as it is for the full realization of justice and shalom in Gods perfected
Kingdom that God works. To love what is of worth in this world and to
suer over its destruction is to pay to that Kingdom the tribute of anguish
over its delay. Our hearts are restless until they nd their rest in thee, O
Lord, said Augustine. What must be added is that our hearts will not
nd their full rest and should not nd their full rest until the heart of our
Lord is itself fully at rest in Gods perfected Kingdom.

Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford University Press, ), .

Is God disturbed by what transpires

in human aairs?

The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures present God as disturbed by the

suerings we human beings undergo and the wrongs we wreak upon each
other and by the way we treat God.
God is of incomparable excellence. That excellence requires of us
due acknowledgment in the form of praise, thanksgiving, love, obedience, and the like. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name, says the
Psalmist (:). But we fail to render to God what due acknowledgment
of Gods worth requires. The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures present
God as disturbed by this, angry. They also present God as forgiving.
In presenting God as angry about, yet forgiving of, how we treat God,
the Scriptures presuppose that we have wronged God. One can forgive
someone only if he has culpably wronged one, and only for the wrong he
has done one.
With near uniformity, the tradition of Christian theology has held
that in presenting God as disturbed by what transpires in human aairs,
Scripture is speaking guratively. There is no negativity in God, none
whatsoever, nor is there any passibility. Thus God is not wronged, and so
is not angry at being wronged. God is invulnerably and imperturbably
joyful.
Some theologians have recognized that if it is not literally true that
God is wronged, then it is also not literally true that God forgives, since
forgiveness is of the person who wronged one. Others failed to notice
the connection; they have talked as if it could be literally true that God
forgives while only guratively true that God has been wronged and is
Th is essay is a substantial revision of my Could God not Sorrow if We Do? in Christopher
Wilkins, ed., The Papers of the Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology (Pittsburgh, PA: The Association
of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada, ). I thank Terence Cuneo for comments on the earlier essay that instigated some of the revisions.

Inquiring about God

on that account angry, disturbed. They held that though there is neither
negativity nor passibility in God, nonetheless God forgives.
Nowadays one hears it said in many quarters that God suers. Often
the persons who say this, though Christian, seem unaware of the nearunanimity of the Christian tradition in favor of the opposite view; and
those who are aware of the tradition often do not genuinely engage it but
content themselves with oering reasons against the traditional view that
the philosophers and theologians of the tradition would nd ludicrously
simplistic. For example: since God loves human beings, since empathy is
an important part of love, since there is suering among human beings,
and since empathy with the suering is itself a mode of suering, God
must suer.
I, too, hold that God is disturbed by what transpires in human aairs.
But rather than ignoring the tradition or brushing it aside, I propose
engaging it at its best. It is my judgment that Aquinas case for the traditional view is as powerful as anyones. So in this essay my project is
to engage his argument. Though Aquinas argument is relevant to the
general issue of whether there is negativity or passibility in God, my discussion will be focused on the narrower issue of whether God experiences
anger. Aquinas way of developing the claim that God does not experience anger implies that God cannot be wronged.

In order to understand Aquinas argument for the conclusion that God
experiences no anger, we must rst get hold of the conceptuality that
he employs in framing his argument. In the course of his discussion of
Gods love in Question of Part I of his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas
distinguishes between love, joy, and delight as passions, and love, joy, and
delight as acts of the intellective appetite. With this distinction in hand, he
observes that though love, joy, and delight are not present in God as passions, they are present in God as aspects of Gods intellective appetite (ST
, ad ). Then he goes on to say that:
As regards the formal element of certain passions, a certain imperfection is
implied, as in desire, which is of the good we have not, and in sorrow (tristitia), which is about the evil we have. Th is applies also to anger, which

I will be using the translation of Summa Theologiae by the Fathers of the English Dominicans
(New York: Benzinger Brothers, ). The translation of Summa contra Gentiles that I will be
using is that by Anton C. Pegis (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, ).

Is God disturbed by what transpires in human a airs?

supposes sorrow. Certain other passions, however, as love and joy, imply no
imperfection. Since therefore none of these can be attributed to God on their
material side. neither can those that even on their formal side imply imperfection be attributed to Him; except metaphorically, and from likeness of
eects Whereas those that do not imply imperfection, such as love and joy,
can be properly predicated of God, though without attributing passion to him.
(ST , ad )

Before I explain the philosophical psychology that Aquinas is employing here, let me state his main point. Having distinguished between love,
joy, and delight as passions and love, joy, and delight as acts of the intellective appetite, Aquinas now asserts that the same distinction applies to
desire, sorrow, and anger. We must distinguish between desire, sorrow,
and anger as passions and desire, sorrow, and anger as acts of the intellective appetite. And his thesis is that whereas love, joy, and delight as acts
of the intellective appetite can be properly predicated of God, though
not as passions, desire, sorrow, and anger cannot be properly predicated
of God either as acts of the intellective appetite or as passions. They can
only be predicated of God metaphorically. For whereas love, joy, and
delight as acts of the intellective appetite do not imply imperfection,
desire, sorrow, and anger as acts of the intellective appetite do inherently
imply imperfection.
Appetite, for Aquinas, is the faculty for wanting that something should
be. It will do no harm also to speak of actualizations of the faculty as
appetites appetites for some particular thing. Appetites in this latter
sense are not to be identied with desires. Desires are appetites for some
good we have not. But not all appetites are for goods we have not; one
may possess some good for which one has appetite. If so, one then experiences joy or delight, the object of the joy being the good present and
possessed.

In Summa contra Gentiles I, , and , , Aquinas reaches the same conclusion using a
somewhat dierent conceptuality. I analyze both passages together, that from Summa Theologiae
and that from Summa contra Gentiles, in Could God not Sorrow if We Do?
The rst change wrought in the appetite by the appetible object is called love, and is nothing else
than complacency (complacentia) in that object; and from this complacency results a movement
towards that same object, and this movement is desire ; and lastly, there is rest which is joy. Since,
therefore, love consists in a change wrought in the appetite by the appetible object, it is evident
that love is a passion; properly so called, according as it is in the concupiscible faculty; in a wider
and extended sense, according as it is in the will (ST III, , , resp.).
I myself would distinguish, as Aquinas does not, between joy in the satisfaction of ones appetite for something, and the joy one sometimes experiences in the occurrence of the object of ones
appetite. For example, theres a dierence between the joy of ones longing to see Prague being
satised, and ones joy in seeing Prague. Either can occur without the other.

Inquiring about God

When the object of an act of appetite is apprehended by sense, the

appetite is sensitive appetite; when it is apprehended (solely) by the intellect, the appetite is intellective appetite (ST I, , , resp.). An example of
an act of sensitive appetite would be a persons desire for some food that
she sees; examples of acts of intellective appetite would be desire for such
things as knowledge and virtue.
Having drawn this distinction between sensitive and intellective appetite, Aquinas then makes the crucial move of identifying sensitive appetites with passions (see especially ST III, , ). Passions, he says, are
movements of the sensitive appetite (ST III, , , sed contra). What
Aquinas has in mind by movement here includes not only sensory perception but also such changes as the contraction or distension of the
heart, or something of the sort (ScG I, , ). Acts of the sensitive appetite, inasmuch as they have annexed to them some bodily change, are
called passions (ST I, , , ad ). Given Aquinas way of structuring
the terrain, the question of whether God has passions, that is, sensitive
appetites, is of no interest. Passions involve sensory perception and bodily changes. But God has no body; so obviously God has no passions; in
God and the angels there is no sensitive appetite (ST III, , , ad ).
Of equal importance with Aquinas identication of acts of the sensitive appetite with passions is his identication of the intellective appetite
with the will (see especially ST I, ). The intellective appetite is called
the will, he says (ST I, , , obj. ).
Aquinas distinguishes will as such from free will. Will as such is that
faculty whereby we desire that something apprehended through the intellect should be, it being understood that desiring it to be presupposes that
we judge it to be good. Free will is a special type of will, that is, a special
type of intellective appetite. The capacity or power of free will is nothing
else but the power of choice (ST I, , , resp.); and to choose something
is to desire something for the sake of obtaining something else (ibid.).
Accordingly, an act of free will is the desiring of something one has
chosen that is to say, the desiring of something for the sake of obtaining
something else. An act of free will presupposes a judgment concerning
means to desired ends.
We have already seen that God and the angels have intellective appetite.
Aquinas is explicit in arming that they thus have will:

Cf. ST III , , ad : In every passion there is an increase or decrease in the natural movement
of the heart, according as the heart is moved more or less intensely by contraction and dilation;
and hence it derives the character of passions.

Is God disturbed by what transpires in human a airs?

Love, concupiscence, and the like can be understood in two ways. Sometimes
they are taken as passions arising, that is, with a certain commotion of the
soul. [I]n this sense they are only in the sensitive appetite. They may, however,
be taken in another way, as far as they are simple aections without passion or
commotion of the soul, and thus they are acts of the will. And in this sense, too,
they are attributed to the angels and to God. (ST I, , , ad )

It is now clear how Aquinas was thinking when he said that joy or
delight is properly in God and that love and joy can be properly
predicated of God. Though God has no passions, God does have intellective appetite; so when love and joy and the like are ascribed to God
or the angels, or to man in respect of his intellective appetite, they signify simple acts of the will having like eects, but without passion
(ST III, , , ad ). Joy occurs when the object of appetite is a good
present and possessed, whereas sorrow occurs when the object of appetite is an already present evil (ScG I, , ). The good that is an object
of Gods intellective appetite is present and possessed. It follows that
God experiences the joy that ensues upon satised intellective appetite.
(See especially ScG I, , .)

We are ready for the question: Why does Aquinas hold that there is no
sorrow, no anger, no desire, in God no negativity of any sort in Gods
intellective appetite? Just by virtue of knowing that God has no body, we
know that anger and sorrow qua passions have no place in Gods experience. But Aquinas holds that they also have no place qua acts of the intellective appetite. Sorrow by its very nature cannot be found in God (ScG
I, , ). Why is that?
Sorrow implies an imperfection; that is why it cannot be properly
predicated of God (ST I, , , ad ). Sorrow is caused by a present evil;
and this evil, from the very fact that it is repugnant to the movement of
the will, depresses the soul, inasmuch as it hinders it from enjoying that
which it wishes to enjoy (ST III, , , resp.). The mere fact of a mans
appetite being uneasy about a present evil, is [thus] itself an evil, because
it hinders the repose of the appetite in good (ST III, , , resp.). And
evil is, of course, the opposite of good. But the nature of the good consists in perfection, which means that the nature of evil consists in imperfection. Now, in God, who is universally perfect there cannot be defect
or imperfection. Therefore evil cannot be in God. Evil, which is the
opposite of good could have no place in God (ScG I, , and ). Hence

Inquiring about God

sorrow in general, and anger, indignation, and the like in particular, have
no place in God.
Aquinas sometimes presents this line of thought as if it were a good argument, all by itself, for the conclusion that in God there is no sorrow. In one
passage, however, he points out why it is not. Though sorrow implies the
existence somewhere of a deciency in excellence, in order to determine
whether someones sorrowing over something represents a deciency in
excellence of that person, one has to consider whether perhaps the person is
sorrowing over an evil that calls to be sorrowed over. If so, then the sorrowing constitutes an excellence in that person, not a deciency even though
sorrow as such is a diminution in well-being. Failure to sorrow over that evil
would be an evil in the person. A thing may be good or evil, says Aquinas,
not just considered simply and in itself but on the supposition of something else: thus shame is said to be good, on the supposition of a shameful
deed done. Accordingly, supposing the presence of something saddening
or painful, it is a sign of goodness if a man is in sorrow or pain on account
of this present evil. For if he were not to be in sorrow or pain, this could
only be either because he feels it not, or because he does not reckon it as
something unbecoming, both of which are manifest evils. Consequently it
is a condition of goodness that, supposing an evil to be present, sorrow or
pain should ensue (ST III, , , resp.). Sorrow is a good inasmuch as it
denotes perception and rejection of evil (ST III, , , resp.).
The main point bears repeating, since it is of crucial importance to our
subsequent argument. If a person does not sorrow over some evil present
to him, that indicates a deciency in him of either cognition or moral discernment. Either he is not aware of the evil, even though it is present to
him, or he is aware of it but does not regard it as an evil. When some evil
is present to a person, then anger, sorrow, indignation, and the like are an
excellence in that person, not a deciency in excellence even though his
life would be better were there no sorrow in him because there was no evil
present to him over which it was right to sorrow.

It is worth noting that Aquinas distinguishes two ways in which an act of appetite may imply
an imperfection: the object of the act may be an evil, or, if the object is a good, one may be related
to that good in an imperfect way. Hope is an example of the latter. Explaining why there is no
hope in God, he says that the notion of the object of a given passion is derived not only from
good and evil, but also from the fact that one is disposed in a certain way towards one of them.
For it is thus that hope and joy dier. If, then, the mode itself in which one is disposed towards
the object that is included in the passion is not betting to God, neither can the passion itself
bet him, even through the nature of its proper species. Now, although hope has as its object
something good, yet it is not a good already possessed, but one to be possessed. Th is cannot bet
God, because of his perfection, which is so great that nothing can be added to it. Hope, therefore,
cannot be found in God, even by reason of its species (ScG I, , ).

Is God disturbed by what transpires in human a airs?

It follows that if there is no sorrow in God, no anger, indignation, and

the like, then there is for God no present evil, nothing to sorrow over.
For if there were an evil present to God but God did not sorrow over that
evil, that would indicate that God was either unaware of that evil or did
not reckon it as unbecoming [i.e., did not reckon it as evil]. But both of
these would themselves be manifest evils in Gods life.
,

Given all the ways in which we human beings fail to honor and obey God,
and more generally, given all the evils in the world, how can Aquinas
possibly hold that there is nothing for God to sorrow over? Might it be
that evils are such that God cannot have knowledge of them? Aquinas
remarks that just as two things are requisite for pleasure; namely, conjunction with good and perception of this conjunction; so also two things
are requisite for pain; namely, conjunction with some evil (which is in so
far evil as it deprives one of some good), and perception of this conjunction (ST III, , resp.).
Aquinas does not dismiss out of hand the suggestion that God lacks
knowledge of evils. He takes it seriously enough to discuss it with care
in the course of his treatment of Gods knowledge, both in the Summa
Theologiae and in the Summa contra Gentiles (ST I, , ; ScG I, ). His
answer is the same in both cases: God does know evils. Not to do so
would itself be a defect in God.
The only other option available to Aquinas for holding that there is no
sorrow in God is to hold that there is nothing over which it is right for
God to sorrow. But we have just taken note of Aquinas contention that
God knows evils, which of course implies that there are evils and that
they are present to God. So how can Aquinas hold that there is nothing
over which it is appropriate for God to sorrow, given his contention that it
is an imperfection not to sorrow over the evils present to one?
In Part I of the Summa Theologiae, Question , Article , respondeo,
Aquinas explains his position:
Since evil is opposed to good, it is impossible that any evil, as such, should be
sought for by the appetite, either natural, or animal, or by the intellectual appetite which is the will. Nevertheless evil may be sought accidentally, so far as it

I discuss Aquinas thought on this point in Suering love, included as chapter in this present
collection.

Inquiring about God

accompanies a good, as appears in each of the appetites. For a natural agent

intends not privation or corruption, but the form to which is annexed the privation of some other form, and the generation of one thing, which implies the
corruption of another. Also when a lion kills a stag, his object is food, to obtain
which the killing of the animal is only the means. Similarly, the fornicator has
merely pleasure for his object, and the deformity of sin is only an accompaniment. Now God wills no good more than He wills his own goodness; yet
he wills one good more than another. Hence He in no way wills the evil of sin,
which is the privation of right order towards the divine good. The evil of natural
defect, or of punishment, He does will, by willing the good to which such evils
are attached.

Let me paraphrase. Pain as such is an evil in ones life, a diminution in

ones well-being; and nobody, or almost nobody, desires pain as such.
Nonetheless pain, as we all know, is sometimes an unavoidable accompaniment to the achievement of some great good the good of having a
malignant tumor removed, for example. In such cases the whole package
is not an evil but a good; and you and I choose the pain in choosing the
package. So too for Gods ordering of the ecology of nature. An event
that is an evil in the life of one living organism may be, or result in, a
good in the life of another. Aquinas example is that of a lions killing a
stag for food. This event is an evil in the life of the stag but a good in the
life of the lion.
Now within nature there is a hierarchical ordering of goods; God
wills one good more than another in accord with this hierarchy. Thus
behind Gods ordering of the ecology of nature in such a way that lions
kill stags (and other animals) for food, we are to see Gods recognition
that lions killing stags (and other animals) for food is a greater good
than whatever were the options. The whole package is a good, even
though the death of the stag as such is an evil. In designing the ecology
of nature, God did not choose the death of the stag as such but chose the
whole package consisting of the stag serving as food for the lion. And
that whole package is a good. God does not choose as such anything that
is an evil in the life of some animal, but chooses it only as part of a package that is a good.
In the moral domain there are also certain evils that God wills as means
to, or as accompaniments of, goods punishment for sin, for example.
The hard treatment that the punishment inicts on the wrongdoer is, as
such, an evil in that persons life; and God does indeed will that evil. God
does not will it as such, however, but for the sake of the good to which
this evil is attached. The package as a whole, imposition of the evil of
hard treatment on someone as punishment for their sin, is a good.

Is God disturbed by what transpires in human a airs?

Aquinas makes clear that sin itself is to be thought of dierently.

Though God wills the evil of natural defect [and] punishment by willing the good to which such evils are attached, God in no way wills the
evil of sin. Obviously God does not will sin for its own sake and as such;
but neither and this is crucial does God will sin as a necessary accompaniment to some good that God wills. Instead, some things happen,
not because God wills, but because He permits them to happen such as
sins (ST III, , , ad ). Though God permits the evil of moral wrongdoing for the sake of some greater good achieved by that permission, and
though God even has foreknowledge of that wrongdoing, nonetheless
God does not will that evil as a necessary attachment to that larger good.
God neither wills [moral] evil to be done, nor wills it not to be done,
but wills to permit [moral] evil to be done; and this is a good (ibid.).
God does not bring about moral evil as part of a larger package that God
brings about; rather, by Gods permission, it is up to human beings to
decide whether or not to commit moral evil.
Let it be granted that God permits sin rather than actively willing it
that is, rather than bringing it about. How does this help Aquinas? Isnt it
still the case that sin is out of accord with Gods will out of accord with
Gods intellective appetite? Aquinas answer comes as a surprise: yes, sin
is indeed out of accord with Gods will: all evil of sin, though happening
in many ways, agrees in being out of harmony with the divine will (ST
I, , , ad ).
Doesnt this undercut everything that Aquinas has said thus far? Recall
that both in our case and Gods, Aquinas identies will not free will
but will as such with intellective appetite. Accordingly, if something
is out of accord with Gods will, then perforce it is out of accord with
Gods intellective appetite. And sin, we have just heard Aquinas say, is
out of accord with Gods will. But given the earlier account of sorrow, if
things happen that are out of accord with Gods intellective appetite, then
there is sorrow in God. It follows, so it would seem, that there is sorrow
in God.
I know of no passage in which Aquinas explicitly addresses this problem in his line of thought. But lets look at a passage that is rather often
cited as containing Aquinas answer. Its a passage in which Aquinas distinguishes between Gods antecedent and consequent will, and then says
that whereas Gods consequent will is always fullled, what God wills
antecedently may not take place. The application to the issue at hand
would be that when Aquinas said, in the passage quoted above, that sin is
out of accord with Gods will, he meant that it is out of accord with Gods

Inquiring about God

antecedent will, not that it is out of accord with Gods consequent will;
and that only if something were out of accord with Gods consequent will
would it be appropriate for God to sorrow over it.
Here is the passage:
[E]verything, in so far as it is good, is willed by God. A thing taken in its primary sense, and absolutely considered, may be good or evil, and yet when some
additional circumstances are taken into account, by a consequent consideration
may be changed into the contrary. Thus that a man should live is good; and that
a man should be killed is evil, absolutely considered. But if in a particular case
we add that a man is a murderer or dangerous to society, to kill him is a good;
that he live is an evil. Hence it may be said of a just judge, that antecedently he
wills all men to live; but consequently wills the murderer to be hanged. In the
same way God antecedently wills all men to be saved, but consequently wills
some to be damned, as His justice exacts. Nor do we will simply, what we will
antecedently but rather we will it in a qualied manner, for the will is directed
to things as they are in themselves, and in themselves they exist under particular
qualications. Hence we will a thing simply inasmuch as we will it when all
particular circumstances are considered; and this is what is meant by willing
consequently. Thus it may be said that a just judge wills simply the hanging of a
murderer, but in a qualied manner he would will him to live, to wit, inasmuch
as he is a man. Such a qualied will may be called a willingness (velleitas) rather
than an absolute will (absoluta voluntas). Thus it is clear that whatever God simply wills takes place; although what He wills antecedently may not take place.
(ST I, , , ad )

This passage comes from the same question of the Summa that the one
quoted just previously comes from, and makes the same substantive
point, the only signicant dierence between the two passages being that
here Aquinas introduces the terminology of antecedent will and consequent will. One antecedently wills some event when, considered as such,
one wants it to happen when one wants it to happen other things being
equal, ceteris paribus. One consequently wills some event to happen when,
all things considered, one wants it to happen. This distinction in types
of willing is obviously a straightforward counterpart to the distinction
drawn in the previous passage between somethings being evil considered
as such and somethings being evil all things considered.
But given that the distinction between Gods antecedent and consequent will is a straightforward counterpart to that earlier distinction, it
is of no help in explaining and defending Aquinas claim that God does
not sorrow over sin nor, let us note, does Aquinas himself employ it for
that purpose. Were the distinction to apply to incidents of moral evil,
what the distinction would tell us is that whereas it was Gods antecedent will that the person not commit the sin, it was Gods consequent

Is God disturbed by what transpires in human a airs?

will that the person commit the sin presumably as part of the larger
good consisting of the good of the persons being permitted to commit
the sin plus the evil of the persons committing the sin. But that was not
Aquinas view. The good that God willed was not the package consisting of the persons being permitted to sin plus the persons sinning; the
good that God willed was solely the good of the persons being permitted to sin. For the sin is not attached to Gods permission of the sin
in the way that the evil of pain is attached to the good of surgery; the
permission of the sin can occur without the sin occurring. God in no
way wills the evil of sin. Human beings dont have to sin when permitted to sin. Sin is opposed to both the antecedent and the consequent
will of God.
Consider an analogy from human aairs. Imagine a father who
strongly disapproves of something his son is inclined to do; and suppose that the father nonetheless gives the son the freedom to do this
thing, permits him to do it. Does the fathers permitting his son to do
this thing imply that he has changed his mind about it and no longer
disapproves of it? Of course not. Suppose that the son actually uses his
freedom to do that very thing. Does that imply that the father now no
longer disapproves of the act in question? Of course not. Does it imply
that the father now, in retrospect, thinks it was not a good thing to permit his son to do that? No, not that either. The father believes, both
before and after, that the package consisting of his permitting his son
to do that bad thing and the sons doing it is better than his forbidding
or preventing him from doing it; but what the father hoped for, when
he gave his son permission, was that the yet better package would come
about consisting of his permitting his son to do that bad thing and the
sons not doing it. The father sorrows over the fact that his sons action
prevented that better package from coming about. He sorrows over what
his son used his freedom to do.
It is Aquinas view that sin is opposed to the consequent will of God.
But why then does God not sorrow over sin? When we lay out Aquinas
full line of thought, we see that to this, the crucial question, he gives no
answer.


In the course of discussing the thesis that God loves all things, in Summa
Theologiae I, , , Aquinas remarks that nothing prevents one and the

Inquiring about God

same thing being loved under one aspect, while it is hated under another.
God loves sinners in so far as they are existing natures; for they have
existence, and have it from Him. In so far as they are sinners, they have
not existence at all, but fall short of it; and this in them is not from God.
Hence under this aspect they are hated by God (ad ). Does this not contradict, at the most fundamental level, the interpretation of Aquinas that
I have been developing? If God hates the sinner with respect to his sinful
act, then God sorrows, for hate is a species of sorrow. So, on Aquinas
view, God does sorrow.
The passage does not contradict my interpretation. In Summa contra
Gentiles, Aquinas notes that, in Scripture, aections are regularly predicated of God that are in their species repugnant to the divine perfection (ScG I, , ). But given the line of thought sketched out above,
Aquinas holds that such predications are to be interpreted as metaphorical rather than proper. Augustine had already developed the thought
that the ground of such metaphorical attributions is a likeness in eects.
Though Aquinas does not mention Augustine, he embraces this principle
of analysis, adding the qualication that in a few cases the ground may
instead be some preceding aection (ibid.).
Explaining the main, Augustinian, line of analysis, Aquinas says that
the will at times, following the order of wisdom, tends to that eect
to which someone is inclined because of a defective passion; for a judge
punishes from justice, as the angry man punishes from anger. Hence
God is at times called angry in so far as, following the order of His wisdom, He wills to punish someone, according to a Psalm (:): for his
wrath is quickly kindled (ScG I, , ). In short, though there is no
anger in God, God does sometimes do the sort of thing that a human
being would do out of anger, doing it out of love, however, not out of
anger. When the biblical writers predicate is angry of God, they have
to be understood as claiming about God that God performs that sort of
action.
The same point is made in Summa Theologiae. After remarking, in the
course of his discussion of Gods will, that some things are said of God
in their strict sense; others by metaphor, Aquinas goes on to observe
that when certain human passions are predicated of the Godhead
metaphorically, this is done because of a likeness in the eect. Hence
a thing that is in us a sign of some passion, is signied metaphorically
in God under the name of that passion. Thus with us it is usual for an
angry man to punish, so that punishment becomes an expression of
anger. Therefore punishment itself is signied by the word anger, when

Is God disturbed by what transpires in human a airs?

anger is attributed to God (ST I, , , resp.). It is not anger that is

signied by the word anger when predicated of God but a certain act
that, in human beings, is typically an expression of anger, namely, the
act of punishment.
Concerning the qualication that he adds to the Augustinian line of
analysis, Aquinas explains that:
I say in some preceding a ection since love and joy, which are properly in God, are
the principles of the other aections, love in the manner of a moving principle
and joy in the manner of an end. Hence, those likewise who punish in anger
rejoice as having gained their end. God, then, is said to be saddened in so far as
certain things take place that are contrary to what He loves and approves, just
as we experience sadness over things that have taken place against our will. (ScG
I, , )

The point is that just as we do not predicate is angry of God on the

ground of there actually being anger in Gods life, literally speaking,
so also we do not predicate the more general term is sad of God on
the ground of there actually being sadness in Gods life, literally speaking. In both cases the predicate applies metaphorically. The ground of
the metaphorical predications is dierent in the two cases, however.
The predicate is angry applies metaphorically to God by virtue of the
resemblance between certain of Gods actions and those actions characteristic of how human beings express anger; the predicate is sad applies
metaphorically to God by virtue of the fact that some things take place
that are contrary to what God loves and approves. We take the preceding aection of Gods love an aection that God does truly and properly have; we look to see whether anything goes contrary to it, since we
human beings are sad over what goes contrary to our desires; and if we
nd something of that sort, the predicate is sad applies metaphorically
to God.
Now suppose it was Aquinas position that things go contrary to
Gods antecedent but not to Gods consequent will. Then the application
of this line of thought concerning metaphorical attributions would be
that the predicate is sad applies metaphorically to God by virtue of the
presence of something in the world that is contrary to Gods antecedent
will.
Two points must be made in response. First, if it were Aquinas position that things go contrary to the antecedent but not to the consequent
will of God, then the right analysis would be not that the predicate is
sad applies metaphorically to God but that it is either literally true
or literally false of God, depending on whether one is speaking about

Inquiring about God

the antecedent or the consequent will of God. If speaking about Gods

antecedent will, it is literally true; if speaking about Gods consequent
will, it is literally false. But second, as we saw above, Aquinas thought
has the implication that sin is contrary not just to the antecedent will
but also to the consequent will of God. So whether we are speaking
of Gods antecedent will or of Gods consequent will, it follows from
Aquinas line of thought that the predicate is sad applies literally
to God.

Aquinas has not found a way of holding conjointly that sin does occur,
that sin is contrary to Gods will, and that God is not disturbed by the
sin that occurs. There is in fact moral evil in the world, and Scripture
presents God as disturbed by this. Aquinas has not oered a coherent reason, let alone a compelling reason, for rejecting that presentation.
Add to this the two following considerations. Scripture presents God
not only as disturbed by evil but also as the savior of humankind from evil;
Christianity is a salvation religion. If there were nothing in human aairs
that God desired to be otherwise, talk of salvation would make no sense.
Second, Aquinas holds that God does actually and literally punish
human beings for their wrongdoing. In one of the passages already quoted
he says that since in human aairs it is usual for an angry man to punish, the punishment being an expression of the anger, when Scripture
attributes anger to God, punishment itself is to be understood as what
is signied by the word anger (ST I, , , resp.). The thought is that the
reality that the word anger indicates, when predicated of God, is Gods
act of punishing the one with whom it is said, metaphorically, that God
is angry.
Now I take it to be a conceptual truth that hard treatment inicted
by one person on another is punishment of the latter only if the inicter
inicts the hard treatment because the subject has done something that
the inicter judges wrong and hence disapproves of. But if there were
nothing that God judged wrong and hence disapproved of, God could
not punish anyone. It is not punishment, let alone just punishment, if
God inicts hard treatment on someone without judging that that person could have and should have acted otherwise, and without thus disapproving of what that person has done and desiring that he not have
done it.

Is God disturbed by what transpires in human a airs?

Let me close by highlighting the discrepancy between the role that
Aquinas assigns to sorrow in human life and his rejection of any such
role in Gods life. In Question , Article , of Summa Theologiae III,
Aquinas asks whether sorrow can be a virtuous good? In his answer
he rst observes that he has already established that sorrow can be a
good; the passage he has in mind is the one I quoted earlier, in which he
observed that though sorrow always implies some evil, nonetheless sorrow over the evil that is present to a person is an excellence in the person;
in Aquinas words, sorrow is a good inasmuch as it denotes perception
and rejection of evil. As to whether sorrow is a virtuous good, he then
says this:
These two things [perception and rejection of evil], as regards bodily pain, are a
proof of the goodness of nature, to which it is due that the senses perceive, and
that nature shuns, the harmful thing that causes pain. As regards interior sorrow, perception of the evil is sometimes due to a right judgment of reason; while
the rejection of the evil is the act of the will, well disposed and detesting that
evil. Now every virtuous good results from these two things, the rectitude of the
reason and the will. Wherefore it is evident that sorrow may be a virtuous good.
(resp.)

Aquinas then asks whether it can be a virtuous good on our part to be

opposed to sin when God, after all, permits it. His answer is that a will
that is opposed to sin, whether in oneself or in another, is not discordant
from the divine will (ST III, , , ad ). The reason that a human will
opposed to sin is not discordant from the divine will is, of course, that sin
is opposed to the divine will, opposed both to the antecedent and to the
consequent will of God; God in no way wills the evil of sin. But if the
fact that sin is opposed to the divine will, even though permitted, makes
it virtuous for us to sorrow over sin, why does not that same fact make it
virtuous for God to sorrow over sin?
As I read the history of Christian thought, it was especially two convictions that drove the theologians and philosophers of the tradition to the
conviction that God experiences no disturbance. One was the conviction
that God is the ultimate condition of everything not identical with God
and is in no way conditioned. The other was the conviction that God is
the sole intrinsic good and is in no way decient in excellence. Though
the rst of these played some role in the traditional argumentation for the

Inquiring about God

thesis that God experiences no disturbance, the dominant role was played
by the second. Aquinas rests his argument entirely on the second. A full
treatment of the topic would consider whether arguments for Gods nondisturbance that start from Gods aseity fare any better than arguments
that start from Gods excellence. An implication of Alvin Plantingas discussion of the traditional case for Gods unconditionedness in Does God
Have a Nature? is that they do not fare better. God is disturbed over our
wronging of God and our wronging of each other.

Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, .

The silence of the God who speaks

Silence is of many sorts. Theres the silence of the countryside on a still

winters night, when all the animals are sleeping and all the insects hibernating. Theres the silence of Amsterdam on the eve of the fth of May,
when the entire old city halts for two minutes to memorialize those who
fell in the war and were silenced. Theres the silence of the mute, and
the silence of rocks, hills, and valleys. Theres silence in music, silence
as essential to the music as the sounds. Theres the silence of the audience chamber when the imminent entrance of the queen is announced.
And theres the hush of the cosmos that the Psalmist enjoins when he
announces: The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silence
before him.
The silence of which I will be speaking is unlike all of those. Its the
silence of the biblical God the biblical God being a God who is not only
capable of speaking but also has on many occasions spoken. More specically, I will be speaking of the biblical silence of the biblical God. The
biblical silence of God is the non-answering silence of God. Its like the
silence of the parent who doesnt answer when the child asks Why? Why
did it happen? Where were you? Its the silence that the poet of Psalm
pleads with God to break: O God, do not keep silence; do not hold thy
peace or be still, O God!

The Bible both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible presents
God as having spoken. In addition, theres a long tradition within both
Judaism and Christianity of regarding the Bible itself as a medium of
divine speech. When I began composing this essay, I had just nished
putting the nal touches to a book of philosophical reections on the
claim that God speaks. Divine Discourse, I titled it. I argued that if we
take speaking to consist in the performance of what J. L. Austin called

Inquiring about God

illocutionary actions, then there is nothing incoherent or impossible in the

claim that God speaks that is, literally speaks. Nothing incoherent or
impossible in the claim that God performs such actions as commanding,
assuring, promising, asserting, and so forth. The silence of God is not an
ontologically necessitated silence. Its not like the silence of the rocks and
the hills, of which it is only metaphorically true that they speak. If God
were impersonal the ground of being or something of that sort then
Gods silence would be ontologically necessitated. The silence of the biblical God is the silence of a God who speaks.
Though the biblical God by which I mean, God as presented in the
Bible though the biblical God does indeed speak, nonetheless, on most
matters, God chooses not to say anything. Most matters God leaves it to
us to nd out about, by observation and inference. And thats wonderful. Who wants to be told everything? The silence of God the biblical
silence of God does not consist in the fact that on many matters, God
says nothing.
The biblical silence of God is the failure or refusal of God to answer
a question put to God. Not the failure or refusal to answer any question
you please, however. Some of the questions put to God are questions that,
given what God has already said, are misguided questions. Questions that
one wouldnt ask if one has heard and genuinely listened to what God has
already said. The biblical silence of God is the non-answering silence of
God in the face of those questions that take into account what God has
already said.
There are many such questions, and of many sorts. I shall focus all
my attention on just one sort. The sort I have in mind are questions that
we nd ourselves incapable of answering on our own. At least, we have
been unsuccessful thus far in answering them on our own. Yet they are
questions to which the person who believes in the biblical God wants an
answer with all his or her soul. They are questions which, unanswered,
put biblical faith at risk. The risk has proved too great for many; faith has
succumbed. Yet God does not answer the questions. Strange and disturbing. Though one poses the questions in the context of having listened to
God, to ask them is to nd oneself standing alongside the Psalmist before
the non-answering silence of God.

Let me begin by locating the sort of questions I have in mind, thus locating the silence. Strange forked creatures, we human beings: animalic

The silence of the God who speaks

persons, personic animals. Persons indeed, but also animals. Animals

indeed, but also persons: creatures endowed with consciousness and free
agency, reective of God, meant to enjoy and tend the earth and to live
in fellowship with other persons, both those of our own kind and God.
Placed in a spatio-temporal physical world along with lots of other forms
of life, including other kinds of animals.
Upon inspecting this curious forked creature that he had made, God
pronounced the workmanship good; by which God no doubt meant, in
part, that our design plan was a good one for our situation. Inspection
completed and passed, God sent us on our way with various instructions
for conduct, and a blessing: may you ourish, said God. May you ourish
as a species. When one reads the report of Gods blessing of humanity in
the context of the other Genesis blessings, thats the natural interpretation. But as the Bible proceeds it becomes clear that the Genesis report
of Gods blessing of humanity had a latent meaning. What God had in
mind was not just that we ourish as a species but that we ourish as
individual members of the species. That we each live until full of years
the three score years and ten built into our design plan; and that during
those years we ourish. Flourish qua the animalic persons, the personic
animals, that we were created as being. And ourish in the earthly and
social environment in which we have been placed. In Genesis, God was
not pronouncing a blessing on disembodied souls about to enter an immaterial heaven.
But things have gone awry, terribly awry, with respect to Gods creating
and providential intent for these creatures. The divine experiment has not
worked out: the experiment of creating this species of forked creatures,
placing and maintaining the species in this physical universe along with
other forms of life, giving the species instructions for conduct, and doing
this creating and maintaining with the intent that each member of the
species should ourish on earth in society until full of years. The blessing
has not been fullled. Some do not ourish; some do not live until full of
years; some neither ourish nor live until full of years.
Prominent among the things that have gone awry in human existence
are life-duration and suering. The lives of many do not endure as they
were meant to endure. And suering does not serve the function it was
meant to serve. Neither do aection and volition function as they were
meant to function; they do not measure up to Gods instructions. But on
this occasion, I shall concentrate on the malfunctioning of suering.
To see in what way suering malfunctions, we must reect on the
nature of suering and on its proper function. For it does indeed have a

Inquiring about God

proper function. In turn, to reect on those matters we must attend to a

dimension of our constitution so deep and pervasive that neither ordinary
speech nor the language of psychology and philosophy provides us with a
conceptuality apt for describing it. My best will thus be fumbling.
Built into the constitution of all of us are two distinct systems of
suering and delight. System is an inept word for what I wish to point
to; but I can think of none better. One of these systems pertains to experience; the other pertains to belief. Let me begin with that system of suffering and delight which pertains to experience. And let me take joy, or
synonymously for my purposes, delight, as the opposite of suering.
Pass quickly before your minds eye samples of human experience in all
its rich variety: sensations, moods, perceptions, emotions, desires, pains,
believings, and so forth. And then notice this fundamental fact about
our way of having such experiences: though some are such that our having them is a matter of indierence to us, many are ones we like having,
and many others we dislike having. Many of our experiences are, as it
were, valorized, charged some positively, some negatively while others
remain neutral, with the charges coming in varying degrees of intensity,
from intensely positive to intensely negative. There is thus in the life of
each of us a continuum of valorization, with each of our experiences
having a place on the continuum. As one moves out from the neutral
center toward the positive end, one reaches a point where everything
beyond is experienced joyfully. As one moves out from the neutral center
toward the negative end, one reaches a point where everything beyond is
experienced sueringly.
Physical pain, for example, is experienced by most of us most of the
time with a negative charge. When that charge is suciently intense, we
experience it sueringly; we suer from the pain. Apparently, though,
there are cases in which even fairly intense physical pain is experienced
with a positive charge. I do not have in mind those cases in which a person puts up with some pain may even be glad to have it because she
believes that some good will ensue; such cases bring belief into the picture, and we will get to that shortly. Rather I have in mind those cases in
which the person just likes having the pain. This makes clear that we must
beware of identifying strong negative valorization with pain. Though we
sometimes speak of suering as pain, to speak thus is to speak metaphorically. A good deal of suering, even of experiential suering, has nothing
to do with pain; witness those who suer from mental depression. And
conversely, as we have just seen, pain can be experienced with a positive
rather than a negative charge.

The silence of the God who speaks

We regularly speak of someone suering from the pain, of someones

suering being caused by mental depression, of someone getting delight
from the music, and so forth. In short, we regularly use causal language,
and causal-sounding language, to describe the relation between suffering or delight, on the one hand, and the experience of pain, mental
depression, or hearing music, on the other. But we must not think of
the connection between suering or delight, and some experience, as the
connection of ecient causality; for the suering which we describe as
caused by pain is not a sensation in addition to the pain sensation,
causally evoked by it. The only sensations are the pain sensations. When
the operative system is the experiential system, then suering and joy are,
as it were, adverbial modiers of the states and events of consciousness
which are the experiences. They are not distinct experiences but ways of
having experiences. Pain and depression are among the experiences that
we normally have sueringly; the perception of art and the taste of good
food are among the experiences that we often have joyfully. Suering is
an existential No-saying to some experience; delight, an existential Yessaying.
What I have been describing thus far is just one of the two systems of
suering and delight that I claimed to identify in us human beings the
experiential system. Let us move on to consider the other system that
which pertains to belief, the belief system. When I learned of the death of
my son, I was cast into suering. What caused my suering was not his
death; for in the interim between his death and my learning of it, I did
not suer. What caused my suering was my coming to believe that he
was dead. If things had gone in the opposite way, if I had come to believe
that he was dead when he was not, then too I would have been cast into
suering by my belief that he was dead, not by his death; for in this case
there would not even have been his death. So our beliefs have the power
of casting us into suering; and they have that power whether or not they
are true.
Yet what I suered over was not the experience of my actively believing that my son was dead; it was, rather, that my son was dead. And that
was not an experience of mine. It wasnt even an object of my experience;
it was something of which I had only a belief. Its what I believed to be
the case that I suered over, not my experiential state of believing it. I
suered over that which was the content of my belief, namely, that my
son was dead, not over my believing it. The suering that occurs when
the experiential system is operating is the suering that consists of sueringly having some experience. By contrast, the suering that occurs when

Inquiring about God

the belief system is operating is an emotion caused by coming to believe

something, the emotion having as its object that which one believes to be
the case.
Its true that there are cases in which we sueringly or joyfully
experience a believing. People wracked by religious doubt who nally
come to believe condently in their salvation not only rejoice over their
salvation; they also experience rejoicingly their condent believing. But
my case was not like that. My suering was not my existential No-saying
to my believing that my son was dead, but my existential No-saying to his
being dead.
We are all created with these two systems of valorization. Theyre
part of the design plan of our constitution. And in all of us, this part of
our design plan gets activated by our life in this world. Sometimes my
throat does actually feel unpleasantly parched. Sometimes I do actually feel unpleasantly hungry. Sometimes I do actually feel a distinctly
unpleasant burning sensation in my nger. Just as one cannot imagine a human being whose constitution does not incorporate those two
systems, so one cannot imagine a human life here on earth in which
these two systems of our constitution are not activated in such a way
as to yield not only positively but also negatively valorized experiences, and beliefs concerning occurrences about which the person feels
negatively.
And now for the point about proper functioning. Being constituted
as we are in this regard serves our ourishing as animalic persons in the
world in which we are placed. That we need water, food, and intact esh
if we are to remain alive is a direct consequence of our animalic constitution. Accordingly, its conducive to our endurance as animalic persons that
we have feelings of thirst when in need of water, feelings of hunger when
in need of food, feelings of pain when our esh gets burned, and that
we experience these sensations negatively. In some cases we experience
them with such intense negativity that we su er from parched throat sensations, su er from hunger pang sensations, su er from burn sensations.
Our endurance as animalic persons would be vastly more precarious than
it is if we didnt experience thirst, hunger, and the pain of burned esh, or
if we didnt experience them negatively.
The examples I have given, of the proper functioning of unpleasantness and suering, were all taken from the animalic side of our existence;
examples of the same point from the personal side of our existence can
also easily be given. Our dislike of loneliness leads us to establish families
and communities. Our dislike of intellectual bewilderment leads us to

The silence of the God who speaks

pursue knowledge. Our dislike of disappointment over unachieved goals

leads us to try harder. And our dislike of a wide range of things makes
them candidates for functioning as means of appropriate punishment and
chastisement.
The conclusion is unavoidable that suering in particular, and negative
valorizations in general, often serve our ourishing as the animalic persons that we are. Of course the person suering doesnt like the suering. But thats exactly the point. We draw back from the experiences we
dislike, do what we can to alleviate and forestall them. Its the combination of our being so constituted as to feel pain upon being burned and
our not liking that pain that makes it much easier for us to survive than
would otherwise be the case; witness the precarious existence of those
rare human beings who do not feel such pain. The suering serves our
ourishing.
Dislike and suering are existential No-saying to that from which, and
over which, we suer. But when a human being placed in this world has a
constitution that includes such capacities for existential No-saying as ours
typically does, we must pronounce a judgmental Yes on that aspect of
our constitution itself. For we cannot imagine creatures such as ourselves
ourishing, or even surviving, in environments such as ours without such
capacities as we have for existential No-saying. Part of what God found
good about the way God created us was surely that we were capable of
suering. The point is made with poetic eloquence by Karl Barth in his
discussion of the menace to human life and ourishing that he calls das
Nichtige:
We must indicate and remove a serious confusion which has been of far reaching eect in the history of theology. [T]here is a positive as well as a negative
aspect of creation and creaturely occurrence. Viewed from its negative aspect,
creation is as it were on the frontier of das Nichtige and orientated towards it.
Creation is continually confronted by this menace. Yet this negative side is
not to be identied with das Nichtige, nor must it be postulated that the latter
belongs to the essence of creaturely nature and may somehow be understood and
interpreted as a mark of its character and perfection [I]n creation there is not
only a Yes but also a No; not only a height but also an abyss; not only clarity but
also obscurity; not only growth but also decay; not only opulence but also indigence; not only beauty but also ashes; not only beginning but also end; not only
value but also worthlessness. [I]n creaturely existence there are hours, days
and years both bright and dark, success and failure, laughter and tears, youth
and age, gain and loss, birth and sooner or later its inevitable corollary, death.
Yet it is irrefutable that creation and creature are good even in the fact that all
that is exists in this contrast and antithesis. In all this, far from being null, it

Inquiring about God

praises its Creator and Lord even on its shadowy side, even in the negative aspect
in which it is so near to das Nichtige.

All true. Yet to say it once again, things have gone terribly awry with
respect to the function of suering in our lives and with respect to lifeduration. It was and is the intent behind Gods creation and maintenance
that with the constitution God gave us we would each and all ourish until
full of years in the environment in which God placed us. But with reference to that intent, things have gone terribly awry. Sometimes a persons
constitution itself becomes disordered in such a way that the person does
not ourish; one lives in severe depression or intractable pain. More often,
the t between our constitution and our environment does not serve our
ourishing. The food I need to maintain my animal existence isnt available; so I die long before full of years, suering intensely from starvation.
You fall. If you merely break an arm, that doesnt signicantly inhibit
your ourishing, since the break soon heals and the suering caused by
the break nicely exemplies the design plan functioning properly. Life
would be far more precarious than it is if breaking bones produced no
pain. But if your fall brings about your early death, I can expatiate as
long as I have breath on the fact that this is just a natural consequence
of your doing what you did with the animal body that you have in the
physical universe which is ours; that doesnt address the fact that things
have gone awry with reference to Gods intent that you should live until
full of years. Again, rather than ourishing in the company of your fellow
human beings you may be subjected to indignity and even torture. Your
human constitution operating in your social and physical environment
does not bring about your ourishing until full of years.
The divine experiment has not worked out: the experiment of creating
these forked creatures with the constitution that they have, placing them
in this physical and social situation, and doing that, as well as maintaining and instructing them, with the intent that each and every one should
ourish until full of years. Suering and life-duration have gone agonizingly awry with reference to that intent.
Why have they gone awry? The very speech of God invites us to pose the
question. It invites us to pose the question for this case and for that case,
and for all the cases in general. Why was the life of this person snued
out when young? Why did that person suer years of intractable suering

Church Dogmatics III/: The Doctrine of Creation, translated by G. W. Bromiley and R. J. Ehrlich
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, ), . I discuss Barths concept of das Nichtige in detail in
Barth on evil, included as chapter of this present volume.

The silence of the God who speaks

that not only went beyond all proper functioning but from which nothing
redemptive could any longer be extracted? Why all this brevity of life and
why all such suering? But no answer is forthcoming. Listen as we may,
we hear no further speech. Only silence. Non-answering silence.
:
Most philosophers and theologians in the Christian tradition would deny
that I have rightly located the silence of God. My location of the silence
is predicated on the claim that things have gone awry with reference to
Gods creating and maintaining intent in particular, that suering and
life-duration have gone awry. They would insist that that is not so.
Some would say that I have misdescribed the world. I said that in this
world of ours we are confronted not just now and then but over and
over with malfunctioning suering and suering that we prove incapable of making redemptive. The tradition of soul-making theodicy, initiated by Irenaeus, would deny this. Let me quote Calvin as an example. He
says in one passage that: Whether poverty or exile, or prison, or insult, or
disease, or bereavement, or anything like them torture us, we must think
that none of these things happens except by the will and providence of
God, that he does nothing except with a well-ordered justice.
Coming to the surface in this passage is Calvins inclination toward
radical occasionalism toward the view that God is the only true causal
agent in reality. As to the character of Gods agency, Calvin was persuaded that God acts always out of justice or love. Thus we get this other
passage: All the suering to which human life is subject and liable are
necessary exercises by which God partly invites us to repentance, partly
instructs us in humility, and partly renders us more cautious and more
attentive in guarding against the allurements of sin for the future.
The thought is clear: all suering is sent by God. Partly out of retributive justice, but mainly out of love. Suering is Gods gift to us: Gods
medicine, Gods surgery. We dont like the medicine and the surgery;
who does like medicine and surgery? But suering is for our moral and
spiritual welfare. It prods us, provokes us, into reorienting and deepening our moral and spiritual selves. The experience of suering may

Institutes of the Christian Religion , translated by Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster
Press, ), III.viii, .
Commentary on the First Book of Moses, called Genesis, translated by J. King (Grand Rapids,
MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, reprint). The commentary is on Genesis :.

Inquiring about God

even, in mysterious ways, provide us with the material necessary for such
deepening. As I put it in a passage in my Lament for a Son:
Suering is the shout of No by ones whole existence to that over which one
suers the shout of No by nerves and gut and gland and heart to pain, to
death, to injustice, to depression, to hunger, to humiliation, to bondage, to abandonment. And some times, when the cry is intense, there emerges a radiance
which elsewhere seldom appears: a glow of courage, of love, of insight, of selessness, of faith. In that radiance we see best what humanity was meant to be.
In the valley of suering, despair and bitterness are brewed. But there also character is made. The valley of suering is the vale of soul-making. ()

Soul-making theodicy points to something deep and true. Yet if we judge

ourselves answerable to the biblical speech of God, then we cannot accept
its claim that, with reference to Gods creating and maintaining intent,
suering and life-duration have not gone awry in our world cannot
accept its assumption that only our aections and volitions have gone
awry. It may well be that the suering of a parent over the death of a child
provides opportunity for the spiritual growth of the parent, or that the
wrongdoing of the parent merits some suering. But what about the child?
What about the benediction God pronounced over the child: May you
ourish until full of years? Or to move to a totally dierent scale: it may
be that the suering of the survivors of the Jewish Holocaust provided an
opportunity for their spiritual growth, or that their wrongdoing merited
some suering. But what about the victims? What about the benediction God pronounced over each and every one of them: May you ourish
until full of years?
Soul-making theodicy speaks only of the survivors, not of the victims.
Either that, or it links victims with survivors by saying that the chastisement or opportunity for spiritual growth provided to the survivors
outweighs in its goodness the evil of the early death and suering of
the victims. In so speaking, it displays its obliviousness to that eachand-every note in the biblical speech of God. The biblical God is not a
nineteenth-century English utilitarian concerned only with the greatest
ourishing of the greatest number. The God who kills children for the
sake of the chastisement or spiritual growth of parents, the God who
kills millions of Jews for the sake of the chastisement or spiritual growth
of the survivors, is a grotesque parody of the biblical God. And should
someone suggest that the early death of the child represents the punishment of the child for the childs own sins, and that the early death of the

Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, , .

The silence of the God who speaks

victims of the Holocaust represents the punishment of the victims for the
victims own sins, we must, emboldened by Gods own book of Job, reject
this suggestion as blasphemy against the justice of God and grotesquely
libelous of those we loved.
:
To suggest that God trades o the suering and early death of victims
for the opportunity provided to survivors for chastisement or spiritual
growth is to imply that I have not so much misdescribed the world as
misdescribed the divine intent. Probably that is the more common objection to the picture I have drawn.
The most common form of the objection holds that it is essential to
distinguish between, on the one hand, Gods creating and maintaining
intent and, on the other hand, Gods desires. Nothing goes awry with
reference to Gods intent. Yet it would be profoundly mistaken to say that
God is indierent as between a life of seventy seconds and a life of seventy years, indierent as between a life of malfunctioning and unredemptive suering and a life absent of such. God desires, for each and every
human being, that that human being ourish on earth in the community
of persons until full of years.
From this point onward, the objection is developed along two distinct
lines. Call the one, the Leibnizian position. The Leibnizian holds that
what must be distinguished from Gods creating and maintaining intent
is Gods ceteris paribus desires. With reference to Gods intent, everything
happens exactly as God plans: early death, unredemptive suering, everything. Nonetheless it remains true that God desires, other things being
equal, that each human being ourish on earth in the community of persons until full of years. But other things are not equal so much so that
its not possible for God to bring about a world in which that ceteris paribus
desire is satised for each and every human being. We can be assured that
in choosing to create this actual world, from among all possible worlds,
God was choosing the best possible or if there isnt any best possible,
that God was choosing as good a world as any. But the only reasonable
conclusion, given the nature of God and the way the world is, is that any
such world incorporates trade-os; not even God can achieve everything
that God desires, other things being equal. Thats why we cannot equate
what God desires ceteris paribus with Gods creating intent. Though suffering and life-duration certainly go awry with reference to the former,
nothing goes awry with reference to the latter.

Inquiring about God

Call the other way of developing the objection, the free will position.
The person who embraces this position holds that suering and
life-duration, and other things as well, go awry with reference to Gods
actual desires, not just with respect to Gods ceteris paribus desires. Not,
though, with reference to Gods creating and maintaining intent; on this
central point he agrees with the Leibnizian. The root of the disagreement
between the two lies in the fact that the person espousing the free will
position holds as the name suggests that human beings are created
capable of free agency. There are, in turn, two dierent ways of working
out the free will position, depending on whether one holds that God can
and does know in advance what agents will freely do in such-and-such
situations, or denies that.
The Molinist version of the free will position holds that God does
know this; and that God uses that knowledge to select, from among
all the possible worlds, this actual world of ours to create and maintain. Everything happens according to the foreknowledge of God. But
not everything happens because God brings it about; some of it happens because of the free agency of created persons. Though God knew
in advance what Hitler would freely do, nonetheless it was not God who
perpetrated the Holocaust but Hitler, along with his henchmen and
underlings. And God profoundly disapproved of Hitlers actions. With
reference to Gods desires and commands for those creatures capable of
free agency, volitions and aections have gone profoundly awry; as the
consequence of that, in turn, very much suering and life-duration have
gone awry. Yet nothing has gone awry with reference to Gods creating
intent. For as on the Leibnizian position, the only reasonable conclusion,
given the nature of God and the world, is said to be that God at creation
was confronted with no option but to make trade-o s. Among the goodas-any worlds available to God for creating, there was none in which it
was both true that human beings were free to make signicant choices
between good and evil, and true that each and every human being ourished on earth in the community of persons until full of years. The course
of the world makes clear that God regards free agency as something of
enormous value. But the fact that God tolerates the evil of our choices
for the sake of our freedom by no means implies that God approves of
that evil. God disapproves of it: actually disapproves of it, not just ceteris
paribus disapproves.
The Baezian version of the free will position, by contrast, denies
that God could know in advance what a person capable of free agency
would freely do in such-and-such a situation. Accordingly, assuming that

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God does sometimes allow persons capable of free agency actually to act
freely, we cannot think of this actual world of ours as selected by God
from among all the possible worlds. Its realization does not represent the
unfolding of a plan chosen by God before the foundations of the world.
Thats not to say that the world as it develops is constantly surprising God;
though one cannot know what an agent will freely do in such-and-such a
situation, often one can know what he or she is likely to do. Nonetheless,
whereas providence on the Leibnizian and Molinist views consists basically of maintenance, on the Baezian view it requires a considerable
degree of intervention if God is to bring about as good a world as any
that God is capable of bringing about. The counterpart to Gods creating
intent in the Leibnizian and Molinist views is, in the Baezian view, the
combination of Gods creating and providential intents. By reference to
that intent, nothing goes awry even though very many of the actions of
free agents and the consequences thereof go radically contrary to Gods
actual desire and command.
Th ree ways of working out the same idea: though things go awry
with reference to Gods desires and commands, nothing goes awry
with reference to Gods creating and maintaining intent. The history
of the world simply exhibits the trade-o s already built into the divine
intent. God does what God intends to do, achieves what God wants to
achieve.
But if we judge ourselves answerable to the biblical speech of God,
we can no more accept the Leibnizian and free will positions than that
of soul-making theodicy. Again it is especially the each-and-every
note in Gods self-characterizing speech that goes unheard or perhaps
in this case not so much unheard as consciously rejected. Lets be sure
that we rightly hear that each-and-every note. Theres no problem,
as such, with trade-os in the life of a single person: no problem as
such with the fact, for example, that I suer from the consequences of
my own free agency. I say, no problem as such; as a matter of fact,
the suering caused by physical and mental disease in our world often
goes far beyond what could possibly be redemptive. The problem inherent in the Irenaean and Leibnizian positions is that the divine intent
is regarded as using the suering and early death of one person as a
means for the chastisement or spiritual growth of another ; the problem
inherent in the free will position is that the divine intent is regarded as
permitting the suering and early death of one person for the sake of
the unencumbered free agency of another. It is this using of one person
for the good of another that the person who judges himself or herself

Inquiring about God

answerable to the biblical speech of God cannot accept as belonging to

the divine intent.
Or, given the working of laws of nature in our world and the
consequences of free agency, must we concede that God doesnt really
pronounce over each and every person the creational and providential
benediction: May you ourish on earth in the community of persons
until full of years? Must we concede that thats an unsustainable interpretation of the biblical speech of God for the reason that that benediction could not possibly be fullled in a world with free agency and laws
of nature such as ours, and that God would know that, and accordingly
would not pronounce such a benediction?
I think we should not concede this. Its thinkable, indeed, that a lot
more knowledge about laws of nature than we actually have might force
us to make that concession, as would a lot more knowledge about the
relation between divine and human agency. But in our current state of
relative ignorance, there is, so far as I can see, no such rational compulsion. Though the point is certainly relevant: a fundamental principle for
the interpretation of divine discourse is that God does not say what entails
or presupposes falsehood.
The root of the diculty, for the person who judges himself or herself answerable to the biblical speech of God, is that the God of the
Bible has told us too much. If we hadnt been told that it was Gods
intent that we should live until full of years, then no problem. If we
hadnt been told that it was Gods intent that we should ourish, then
no problem. If we hadnt been told that it was Gods intent that we
should ourish here on earth in the community of persons, then no
problem. If we hadnt been told that it was Gods intent that each and
every one of us should ourish until full of years, then no problem.
Its the speech of the biblical God that leads us to see that suering
and life-duration have gone awry with reference to Gods creating and
maintaining intent. If we could dispense with answering to that speech,
it would be possible to devise a point of view that ts together such
suering and brevity of life as we nd in our world with the divine
intent; many have done exactly that.

Suering and life-duration have gone awry with reference to Gods creating and maintaining intent. To acknowledge that is to have the question well up irresistibly: Why? Why this untimely death? Why that

The silence of the God who speaks

unredemptive suering? Why any untimely death and why any unredemptive suering?
We cannot help but ask. Yet we get no answer. None that I can discern.
We confront non-answering silence. We confront the biblical silence of
the biblical God. We shall have to live in the silence.
What will such living be like? If we have all this while judged ourselves
answerable to the speech of God in determining the questions we put to
God, then we shall likewise judge ourselves answerable to the speech of
God as we live in the silence of God.
In the rst place, we shall endure in holding on to God, and shall
engage in the practices of devotion whereby such holding on is accomplished, expressed, and nurtured.
Secondly, we shall join with God in keeping alive the protest against
early death and unredemptive suering. Till breath dies within us
we shall insist that this must not be. We shall reject all consolation
that comes in the form of urging us to accept untimely death, all that
comes in the form of urging us to be content with unredemptive suffering. We shall endure in our existential No to untimely death; we
shall forever resist pronouncing No on our existential No to untimely
death. We shall endure in our existential No to unredemptive suering; we shall forever resist pronouncing No on our existential No to
unredemptive suering. In the stories we tell of humanitys dwelling
on earth, we shall not forget untimely death and unredemptive suering; we shall keep the memory alive so as to keep the protest alive. And
in the stories we tell of our own lives, we shall not disown our suering
but own it. There will be more to our stories than that; but there will
be at least that.
Thirdly, we shall hope for the day, await the occasion, and seize the
opportunity to own our own suering redemptively. We shall struggle to
wrest good from this evil to turn it to our prot while still saying
No to untimely death and unredemptive suering.
And lastly, whenever and wherever we spot an opening, we shall join
the divine battle against all that goes awry with reference to Gods intent.
We shall join God in doing battle against all that causes early death and
all that leads to unredemptive suering: disease, injustice, warfare, torture, enmity. The self-characterization of the biblical God is not that of
a God who passively accepts things going awry with reference to Gods
intent but that of a God who does battle; and it is not that of a God who
weakly struggles in a failing cause but that of a God whose cause will
triumph. It is in that cause that we shall join, as Gods co-workers. In his

Inquiring about God

discussion of das Nichtige Karl Barth makes the point far more eloquently
than I myself could possibly make it:
The incredible and real mystery of the free grace of God is that He makes His
own the cause of the creature. There is a grain of truth in the erroneous view
that in virtue of His Godhead God himself has absolutely done away with das
Nichtige, so that for Him it is not only das Nichtige but nothing. In Him there
is room only for its negation. And as the Creator He has eected this negation
once and for all. In creation He separated, negated, rejected and abandoned das
Nichtige. How, then, can it still assail, oppose, resist and oend Him? How can
it concern Him? But we must not forget the covenant, mercy and faithfulness of
God, nor should we overlook the fact that God did not will to be God for His
own sake alone, but that as the Creator He also became the covenant Partner
of his creature. Why is this so? Because, having created the creature, He has
pledged His faithfulness to it. That is to say, He whom das Nichtige has no
power to oend is prepared on behalf of His creature to be primarily and properly oended and humiliated, attacked and injured by das Nichtige. Though
Adam is fallen and disgraced, he is not too low for God to make Himself his
Brother, and to be for him a God who must strangely contend for his status,
honor and right. For the sake of this Adam God becomes poor. He lets a
catastrophe which might be quite remote from Him approach Him and aect
His very heart. He does this of His free grace. For He is under no compulsion. He might act as the erroneous view postulates. He might remain aloof
and detached from das Nichtige. He might have been a majestic, passive and
beatic God on high. But He descends to the depths, and concerns Himself
with das Nichtige, because in His goodness He does not will to cease to be
concerned for His creature. He would rather be unblest with His creature
than be the blessed God of an unblest creature. He would rather let Himself
be injured and humiliated in making the assault and repulse of das Nichtige
His own concern than leave His creature alone in this aiction. There are
few heresies so pernicious as that of a God who faces das Nichtige more or less
unaected and unconcerned and the parallel doctrine of man as one who must
engage in independent conict against it.

I add, in closing, that it is at the very point on which Barth speaks so eloquently that biblical faith is most severely tried. Is it really true that God
will win? Can we trust the struggles outcome when we dont know the
struggles cause? Or wouldnt it help to know the cause?

Church Dogmatics III/, .

Barth on evil

Though Karl Barth has much to say about evil, he does not aim to explain
evil. Explanation, he says, is impossible; evil is necessarily incomprehensible and inexplicable to us as human beings. Working as a Christian
theologian whose thought is rmly grounded in the Scriptures, he develops instead a theological framework for thinking and speaking about evil.
The development, extraordinarily rich, and as dicult and expansive
as it is rich, occurs in the third part of the third volume of his Church
Dogmatics, this being the volume in which he develops the doctrine of
creation.
Having devoted of III/ to a discussion of providence, under its
three aspects of preservation, accompaniment, and rule, he then opens
the following section thus:
There is opposition and resistance to Gods world-dominion. There is in worldoccurrence an element, indeed an entire sinister system of elements, which is not
comprehended by Gods providence in the sense thus far described, and which is
not therefore preserved, accompanied, nor ruled by the almighty action of God
like creaturely occurrence There is amongst the objects of Gods providence an
alien factor. It cannot escape Gods providence but is comprehended by it. The
manner, however, in which this is done is highly peculiar in accordance with the
particular nature of this factor The result is that the alien factor can never be
considered or mentioned together in the same context as other objects of Gods
providence. Thus the whole doctrine of Gods providence must be investigated
afresh. This opposition and resistance, this stubborn element and alien factor,
may be provisionally dened as nothingness [das Nichtige]. ()

Evil is nothingness. Evil is not dened as nothingness by Barth.

Rather, evil is identied by Barth as nothingness. To the question, What
really is evil? the answer he gives is, Nothingness. Nothingness is what

Church Dogmatics III/: The Doctrine of Creation. I use the translation by G. W. Bromiley and
R. J. Ehrlich (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, ). References to this work are given parenthetically
in the text.

Inquiring about God

our word evil designates. Scriptural words for nothingness thus, for
evil are chaos and the demonic. The fundamental feature of nothingness is that it menaces menaces God and creature alike, especially
those creatures that are human. Evil is the actualization of this menace:
the being of the creature is menaced by nothingness, menaced in such a way
that it needs the divine preservation and sustaining and indeed deliverance if it
is not to fall victim to it and perish. Obviously it is menaced by something far
more serious than mere non-being as opposed to being, although it is of course
menaced by non-being too that is chaos according to the biblical term and
concept. ()

The word Barth actually uses to designate that which is evil is, of course,
not nothingness, since he was writing in German; its das Nichtige. The
translators recognize that nothingness is inadequate as a translation
of das Nichtige. Though accurate, its connotations are much too pallid.
Since translation is not my concern here, I will, when speaking in my
own voice, avoid the issue and regularly use Barths original, das Nichtige;
when quoting from the English translation of Barths text I will, however,
quote the translation as it stands.
Before we can get in hand the various things Barth says about das
Nichtige, we need some glimmer of what he has in mind. One point of
access to his thought here is his discussion of Heidegger and Sartre; for
though Barth regards their comprehension of das Nichtige as shallow
compared to that available to the Christian, he thinks that they did nonetheless recognize das Nichtige. They recognized that das Nichtige is
no mere ction or theme of discussion. It is no mere product of our negations to
be dismissed by our armations. It is there. It assails us with irresistible power
as we exist, and we exist as we are propelled by it into the world like a projectile.
We are forced to consider it, for it already confronts us. We experience nothingness. Their [i.e., Heideggers and Sartres] thought is determined in and
by real encounter with nothingness. They may misinterpret this encounter and
therefore nothingness, but not for a moment can they forget it. ()

What brought das Nichtige with inescapable force to the attention of

Heidegger and Sartre was the calamitous times through which they lived.
Both lived through the
upheaval occasioned by two world wars. They have completely abandoned the
optimism and pessimism of the th and th centuries. For the moment at
least they cannot deny that nothingness and it may well be the true nothingness has ineluctably and unforgettably confronted them. Whoever is ignorant of the shock experienced and attested by Heidegger and Sartre is surely
incapable of thinking and speaking as a modern man. For we men of to-day

Barth on evil

have consciously or unconsciously sustained this shock. In our time man has
encountered nothingness in such a way as to be oered an exceptional opportunity in this respect. More than that may and must not be said, for at all times
man has his being within this encounter, and no more than an exceptional
opportunity of realising this is oered us even to-day. Even to-day we have no
reason to boast that we have looked in the face of demons. ()

We have indeed. But all men and all women at all times and in all places
have done so whether or not they knew that they were doing so.
Heidegger and Sartre were witnesses to the menacing power of das
Nichtige. To the presence of the demonic among us. To that strange factor in reality that powerfully menaces not only our ourishing but our
existence. To that which threatens our existence and our shalom with
nihilation. More than merely human sin and its consequences, more than
merely that plus the evils that befall us, das Nichtige is that power, that
dynamic, that menacing and destructive factor (Barths words) of which
these are the concrete manifestations. Das Nichtige is the power of darkness that haunts our world. Menace. Cosmic menace.
Barths entire discussion pivots on his claim that evil is a power.
Heidegger and Sartre sensed the presence of such a power. Holy Scripture
arms it arms that there is a power of darkness that haunts reality
and is ever on the attack against creation in general and human beings in
particular, arms that human beings are helpless against it but that God,
embracing the life and ourishing of his human creatures as Gods own,
sacriced Gods own Son as victim in the battle, thereby winning the
contest. Holy Scripture regards nothingness as a kingdom, based upon
a claim to power and a seizure of power always on the march, always
invading and attacking. Its decisive insight is that God Himself is the
superior and victorious Opponent of nothingness (). It is for the
Bible no mere gure of speech or poetic fancy or expression of human
concern but the simple truth that nothingness has this dynamic, that it is
a kingdom on the march and engaged in invasion and assault (). To
deny such a power, says Barth, is to trivialize what transpired at the cross
and in the resurrection.
We must not deceive ourselves and say that it does not really do all these things,
or is not real in all these things. One form of the triumph that nothingness can
achieve is to represent itself as a mere appearance with no genuine reality. Let
us only be proud and enlightened and unafraid and unconcerned in face of it!
Let us only persuade ourselves that there is nothing in it, that there is no devil
and no kingdom of evil and demons as his plenipotentiaries, as eective powers
and forces in the life of nations and societies, in the psychical and physical life
of men and their relationships, that we can control our being without having to

Inquiring about God

take into account this alien lordship or considering that where it is not broken
all being and enterprise and achievement on earth is fundamentally corrupt and
worthless! Nothingness rejoices when it notices that it is not noticed, that
it is boldly demythologised, that humanity thinks it can tackle its lesser and
greater problems with a little morality and medicine and psychology and aesthetics, with progressive politics or occasionally a philosophy of unprecedented
novelty if only its own reality as nothingness remains beautifully undisclosed
and intact. ()

DAS NICHTIGE

Barth faces the topic of das Nichtige head-on immediately after he has
discussed Gods providential preservation, accompaniment, and rule of
his creatures. But as he himself observes, reference to das Nichtige was
already made in his discussion of Gods preservation. So lets begin there.
Before God created if we may speak of before before God created, there was God and God alone. Nothing else, not anything else. The
primeval if we may speak of primeval state of things, other than
God, was that they just were not. That is, there were no other things than
God. If things other than God are to exist they must be brought forth
from not being. The only one who can do that is God by creating.
Creation is bringing things forth from the abyss of non-being.
But we dont yet have das Nichtige in view. For das Nichtige is not nonbeing as such. Non-being is, precisely, not anything; whereas das Nichtige
is something: there is das Nichtige. Yet its not the case that before God

Cf. : We cannot deny the power and powers of falsehood in a thousand dierent forms.
We cannot deny that in their infamous way they are real and brisk and vital, often serious and
solemn, but always sly and strong, and always present in dierent combinations of these qualities, forming a dreadful fth or sixth dimension of existence. Where? But surely the real question
is: Where not? They are there in the depths of the soul which we regard as most properly our
own. They are there in the relationships between man and man, and especially between man
and woman. They are there in the developments of individuals and their mutual relationships.
They are there in the concern and struggle for daily bread, and especially for that which each
thinks is also necessary in his case. They are there in that in which man seeks his satisfaction or
which he would rather avoid as undesirable, in his care and carelessness, in the aming up and
extinguishing of his passions, in his sloth and zeal, in his inexplicable stupidity and astonishing
cleverness, in his systematisation and anarchism, in his progress, equilibrium and retrogression,
in the great common ventures of what is called culture, science, art, technics and politics, in the
conict and concord of classes, peoples, and nations, in the savage dissensions but also the beautiful agreement and tolerances in the life of the Church, and not least in the rabies and even more
so the inertia theologorum. We cannot deny but must soberly recognise that in all these things
the demons are constantly present and active like the tentacles of an octopus. They are powers
indeed, and yet they are only the powers of falsehood.

Barth on evil

creates there is God and something else namely, das Nichtige. Before God
creates there is God and not anything else. Neither is it the case that das
Nichtige is a creature brought forth from non-being by God. Das Nichtige
is not a creature of God but comes about as the inevitable accompaniment
of Gods bringing forth of creatures.
On God there are no limitations. In particular, on Gods existence there
are no limitations. God exists eternally, necessarily, and self-suciently.
By contrast, the existence of the creature is inherently limited.
To no creature does it belong to be endless, omnipresent or enduring. The preservation which God grants to the creature is the preservation of its limited
being . It will be understood that it is not for this reason partial, transitory
or imperfect. Indeed, for this very reason it is a complete and nal and perfect
preservation. For what could be more perfect than that God should give to the
creature that which is proper to it, that to each one He should give that which
is proper, that is, that which it is able to have of being, and of space and time
for that being, according to its existence as posited by the wisdom and power of
God, and that which it ought to have of being and space and time according to
the righteousness and mercy of God? ()

Why the repeated reference to Gods activity of preserving ? Because among

the intrinsic limitations of the creature is its lack of self-suciency. God
cannot give to the creature self-sucient existence. Accordingly, the creature forever bears within itself the possibility of sliding back better, the
tendency to slide back into the abyss of non-being. Its as if non-being
is tugging, pulling, at the creature as if it has an attracting power over
it. Only Gods preserving activity prevents the creatures tendency toward
not being from being realized. Indeed, Gods preserving activity just is
Gods prevention of the realization of that tendency. Non-being is the
abyss in which [the creature] must inevitably sink, the ocean by whose
waves it must inevitably be overwhelmed, if He who created it did not
also preserve and sustain it (). The reason, once again, is that the creature is not God. It is the reality which is distinct from God, elected,
willed and actualised by Him, but dierentiated from Him, and therefore
not participating in His sovereignty or in the freedom of his election and
decision. And as such, if God did not will to save and keep it, it might
well, indeed it must, be overwhelmed by chaos and fall into nothingness

The creative work of God has this in common with His work of grace that these things take
place within the created order with the very same immediacy as the act of creation itself. But
when it is a matter of the preservation of creation as such, when it is a matter of that which succeeds creation but precedes redemption, there is need of a free but obviously not of a direct or
immediate activity on the part of God ().

Inquiring about God

(). To be a creature is to be subject to the menacing tug of nihilation

(annihilation) which only Gods providential preservation can avert. The
being of the creature is menaced by nothingness, menaced in such a way
that it needs the divine preservation and sustaining and indeed deliverance if it is not to fall victim to it and perish().
Das Nichtige is that menacing power. Given the non-self-suciency
of creatures, a creature cannot exist without being subject to the menacing tendency to sink out of existence. Das Nichtige is that menacing
tendency, inherent in being a creature that is not self-sucient, toward
not being: the tremendous danger, the most serious peril, so completely
hostile to the creature as to be an absolute denial of the essence and
existence of the creature (). Das Nichtige comprises more than the tendency of every creature to sink into non-existence; shortly we shall see
what the more is. But this, at least, it is.
The shadow which ees before God, possesses everywhere in the Bible its own
ponderable reality. God knows this nothing as the opponent of the creature, as
that which may and can seduce and destroy the creature. God knows that under
the dominion of this nothing the creature must perish. It is always present as
it were on the frontier of the cosmos to which He has given being. It continually calls this cosmos in question. It has mounted an oensive against it. If only
for a moment God were to turn away His face from the creature, the oensive
would break loose with deadly power. In its relation to God chaos is always an
absolutely subordinate factor, but it is always absolutely superior in its relation to
the creature. ()

Now look at creation from a slightly dierent angle. When in creation

God pronounced His wise and omnipotent Yes He also pronounced His
wise and omnipotent No He marked o the positive reality of the creature from that which He did not elect and will and therefore did not
create. And to that which He denied He allotted the being of non-being,
the existence of that which does not exist (). [T]hat which He did
not elect and will, the non-existent, comprises the innite range of all the
possibilities which He passed over and with good reason did not actualise, the abyss in which the one thing which He did create must inevitably
sink if he who created it did not also preserve and sustain it (). The
thought is that originally there was God and non-being that is, God
and nothing else; now, after creation, there are God, creatures, and all
that God did not create. Barth calls this last, that which is not. Gods
activity of creating perforce brings about this new realm of that which
is not.

Barth on evil

What are we to make of this? Barths words invite the following interpretation: Gods creation has a bright and a shadow side. The bright side
consists of all the things God brought about by saying Yes to them; these
are the creatures. The shadow side consists of all the things God brought
about by saying No to them; these are the unactualized possibles. It is
these unactualized possibles, that which is not, which menace the creature
and thus constitute das Nichtige. Barth says that that which is not is truly
actual and relevant and even active after its own particular fashion ().
He says that In the power that is, the negative power of this divine
creating, approving, dividing and calling, there enters in with the creature
that which in all these things is marked o from it, and it enters in with
menacing power, the power of the denial of that which God has armed,
as the non-being which does not exist, as that which is not created, as that
which is so absolutely opposed and hostile to the creature (). He identies that which is not as that which according to the account in Genesis
: [God] set behind him as chaos (). And he describes it as the object
of Gods wrath and rejection and judgment (). The picture comes
to mind of a numberless swarm of possible wrens, robins, sparrows, and
such like, to which God in wrath said No, I refuse to create you, and
which now menace creatures by trying to drag them down into the abyss
where they too will become mere possibles.
If this is how Barth was thinking, it wont do. That there are unactualized possibles is a position that enjoys philosophical respectability
though I myself regard it as mistaken. But even if one holds that there are
mere possibles, I dont see that its tenable to suppose that creation consists of bringing about existent things, on the one hand, and non-existent
possibles, on the other. One can see what was going through Barths
mind: theres an innitude of possibilities that God rejected at creation;
Gods options were not limited to what God actually created. But the
question to ask is how Gods rejection of these possibles could bring them
about. Dont they have to be there already if God is to reject them? And
arent the actuals also possibles; viz., actualized possibles? If one holds that
there are possibles, then it is much better to think of God as selecting
some from among the already-extant possibles to actualize, and choosing
to let the others remain unactualized. But then, of course, before creation
its not God and non-being, that is, God and nothing else; its God and
an innite realm of possibles. An unacceptable option. Beyond a doubt
Barth wanted to avoid it. He saw no option but to say that in creating,
God brought about the rejected possibles.

Inquiring about God

But rather than postulating possibles, some actualized, some not, it

is better to recover the Augustinian way of thinking: before creation
there was indeed just God and nothing else. But as part of that reality which is God there are the divine ideas, some of these being ideas
of individual things. In creating, God chose to exemplify some of Gods
exempliable individual ideas and not others. Barth remarks that that
which is not is that which is actual only in the negativity allotted to it by
the divine decision, only in its exclusion from creation, only, if we may
put it thus, at the left hand of God (). What this comes to, on the
Augustinian interpretation, is that only after God decided to exemplify
certain of Gods ideas and not others, will the latter have the property of
not having been chosen by God for exemplication in creation. But then,
they really do have that property. That which is not has and can have its
actuality only under the almighty No of God, but does have and is actuality in that sense ().
Theres more that needs correcting than the ontology, however; what
Barth says about the unactualized possibles is even more questionable
than his postulation thereof. Surely unactualized possibles, supposing
there are such, are totally lacking in activity and power. They menace
no one. And why should they be the objects of Gods wrath? Presumably
God liked them less, individually and in combination, than the possibles
God actualized; otherwise God would not have said No to them. But
does the No have to be a wrathful No? Why should all those impotent,
non-menacing, merely possible wrens, robins, and sparrows be the object
of Gods wrath?
Is it possible to spy what Barth might have been trying to get at? In
particular, is it possible to spy something that he might have been trying to get at which is consistent with what we earlier interpreted him as
saying? Or do we have to say, with regret, that this part of his thought is
all confusion? Well, consider what he says at the very beginning of his
discussion of that which is not :
God created [the creature] out of nothing, that is, by distinguishing that which
He willed from that which He did not will, and by giving it existence on the
basis of that distinction. To that divine distinction it owes the fact that it is. And
to the same distinction it owes the fact that it can continue to be. By preserving
the distinction God preserves the creature. ()

I suggest that what Barth wants to call to our attention is an additional aspect of the menacing tendency that confronts the creature. So
far we have described that menace as the tendency toward not existing.

Barth on evil

But once we see that creation consists of God distinguishing among

possibilities in deciding to exemplify some of his exempliable archetypes and not others, then we see that the menacing tendency that confronts the creature is also the tendency toward the overthrowing of the
distinction God made in creating that between those of Gods ideas
that God exemplied and those that God did not. Earlier in our discussion, Gods providential preservation was described as the preservation
of the creature in existence, against the ever-present threat thereto; now
we see that it can also be described as the preservation of the distinction
among possibilities, made in creation, against the ever-present threat to
that.
Before we move on, we must look at creation from yet another angle.
The creature is created and preserved in order that it may live in fellowship with God, in order that the glory of the beloved Son of God may
be manifest in it (), in order that it may participate in [the] work of
salvation (). For this fellowship, for this manifestation, for this participation, it must exist. It must have permanence and continuity. It must
be preserved by God (). Thus the tendency of the creature toward not
existing, which haunts the created order, menaces not only the creature,
and not only that plus the dierentiation God drew in creating, but also
Gods gracious intentions.
[The menace] does not consist in the rst instance in the powerlessness of the
creature in face of the non-existent. It cannot then be described or understood in the rst instance only as a weakness, privation, or imperfection of
the creature. It has its root in the foreordination of the creature to participation in the divine covenant of grace. Because it has to be present in the divine
work of deliverance and liberation, it can therefore be present present as a
creature in all the immeasurable perils in which it cannot preserve or sustain itself. ()

I judge this interpretation of what Barth was really getting at to be conrmed by the following
passage, in which Barth, more than pages later than the passages we have been scrutinizing,
summarizes his earlier discussion: we were trying to understand the divine preservation of
the creature. We saw this to be Gods preservation of His creature from being over-thrown by the
greater force of nothingness. We then considered how God conrms and upholds the separation
between His creature and nothingness as eected in creation, halting the threatened and commencing enslavement of the creature. Barth immediately goes on to add the third point which I
(am about to) make in the text above: We saw that he does this because His will for His creature
is liberation for a life in fellowship with Himself, because He wills to be known and praised by
the creature as its Liberator and because He thus wills its continuation and not its destruction
().

Inquiring about God

We do not yet have evil in view. We have discerned das Nichtige. Its that
menacing tendency that faces the creature, by virtue of the creatures
ontological non-self-suciency, to sink out of existence, and its that
menacing tendency that faces God, also by virtue of the creatures nonself-suciency, toward the overthrowing of the demarcations made by
God at creation for the sake of fellowship with the creature. Gods providential preservation staves o that menace, however. Nothingness [has
thus far] met us as this total peril which is not actual in this form but is
warded o by Gods preservation (). So far then, no evil. Menace.
But the menace is warded o. We have not yet seen das Nichtige in its
persona of evil.
Das Nichtige not only menaces the creature; it actually makes an
incursion into the life of the creature. Evil is the incursion of das
Nichtige into creation. The pages we have been looking at occur early
in of Church Dogmatics III/, the topic of the section being God
the Father as Lord of His Creature. The topic of section is God
and Nothingness (Gott and das Nichtige). Here Barth discusses das
Nichtige in the persona of evil. Conversely: here he develops his account
of evil as das Nichtige.
Barth sets himself some crucial theological parameters. When we confront evil, we confront the fact that
between the Creator and the creature there is that at work which can be
explained neither from the side of the Creator nor from that of the creature, neither as the action of the Creator nor as the life-act of the creature, and yet which
cannot be overlooked or disowned but must be reckoned with in all its peculiarity. The simple recognition that God is Lord over all must obviously be applied
to this third factor as well. Where would be the real situation of the real man
or the real way of real trust of the real Christian if the knowledge that He is
Lord over all were not applied especially to this element? ()

Given this requirement, the challenge, for our explanation of Gods

lordship over evil, will be to avoid two opposite errors.
We stray on the one side if we argue that this element of das Nichtige derives
from the positive will and work of God as if it too were a creature, and that
the Creator Himself and His lordship are responsible for its nothingness, the
creature being exonerated from all responsibility for its existence, presence
and activity. But we go astray on the other side if we maintain that it derives
solely from the activity of the creature, in relation to which the lordship of
God can only be a passive permission and observation, an ineectual foreknowledge and a subsequent attitude. How can justice be done both to the

Barth on evil

holiness and to the omnipotence of God when we are faced by the problem of
nothingness? ()

Barth begins his treatment by polemicizing against confusions of two

sorts. The rst is that which identies one and another form of negation inherent in creatures and their interrelationships, or inherent in
Gods relationships with creatures, with das Nichtige as such or with
das Nichtige qua evil. The fact that the creature is this and not that, and
that God is this and not that, is not evil; neither is it das Nichtige in
its persona of ontological menace. nothingness is not simply to be
equated with what is not, i.e., not God and not the creature. For one
thing, God is God and not the creature, but this does not mean that
there is nothingness in God. On the contrary, this not belongs to His
perfection. And as to the creature, the creature is creature and not
God, yet this does not mean that as such it is null or nothingness. If
in the relationship between God and creature a not is involved, the
not belongs to the perfection of the relationship, and even the second
not which characterises the creature belongs to its perfection. Hence
it would be blasphemy against God and His work if nothingness were
to be sought in this not, in the non-divinity of the creature. Then
too, the diversities and frontiers of the creaturely world contain many
nots. No single creature is all-inclusive. None is or resembles another.
To each belongs its own place and time, and in these its own manner,
nature and existence ().
Its true that it is by virtue of the fact that its not God, on the one
hand, and not identical with any of the non-existent possibles (to use
the language of Barths ontology), on the other hand, that the creature
is menaced by its tendency toward not existing. But these negations by
virtue of which it is menaced are not, as such, the Menace; and certainly
these negations are not themselves evil. The presence of these negations
does not represent the incursion of das Nichtige into creation. When the
creature crosses the frontier [of Gods positive will and election] from the
one side, and it is invaded from the other, nothingness achieves actuality
in the creaturely world. But in itself and as such this frontier is not nothingness (). One might rightly describe the negations belonging to the

I allow myself a bit of poetic (philosophical?) license here. After a statement of the problem,
Barth does begin his discussion of das Nichtige with a section entitled The Misconception of
Nothingness. But what he discusses in that section is only the misconception which is the second of the two sorts in my arrangement. He discusses the misconception which is the rst, in my
arrangement, when he gets around later to what he calls a comprehensive statement ().

Inquiring about God

creature its distinction from God and its individual distinctiveness

as belonging to the shadow side of creation. On this shadow side, the
creature, says Barth, is contiguous to das Nichtige. Better, I think, to say
that it is contiguous to that which is not, and (ontologically) susceptible
to the incursion of das Nichtige. But contiguity to that which is not, and
susceptibility to the incursion of das Nichtige, is not yet the incursion of
das Nichtige.
All conceptions and doctrines that view nothingness as an essential and
necessary determination of being and existence and therefore of the creature, or as an essential determination of the original and creative being of
Godself, are untenable from the Christian standpoint. They are untenable
on two grounds, rst, because they misrepresent the creature and even
the Creator Himself, and second, because they confound the legitimate
not with nothingness, and are thus guilty of a drastic minimization of
the latter ().
Let us move on to the other, even more important, misconception
against which Barth polemicizes. It is a near relative of the rst. Pointing
to a negative aspect of creation and creaturely occurrence, the second
misconception identies this negative aspect with evil that is, with das
Nichtige qua evil. The similarity to the previous misconception is obvious.
What makes it dierent is that this negative aspect is distinct from the
negations of the prior misconception.
In creation there is, says Barth,
not only a Yes but also a No; not only a height but also an abyss; not only clarity
but also obscurity; not only growth but also decay; not only opulence but also
indigence; not only beauty but also ashes; not only beginning but also end; not
only value but also worthlessness. [I]n creaturely existence there are hours,
days and years both bright and dark, success and failure, laughter and tears,
youth and age, gain and loss, birth and sooner or later its inevitable corollary,
death. ()

It is irrefutable, however, that creation and creature are good even in

the fact that all that is exists in this contrast and antithesis. In all this,
far from being null, it praises its Creator and Lord even on its shadowy
side, even in the negative aspect in which it is so near to nothingness
().

Even prior to creation, there will be an innitude of things that God is not. On the trinitarian
understanding of God, there will even be negations within God. These are additional reasons, not
mentioned by Barth, for not identifying negations with das Nichtige qua evil nor even with das
Nichtige as such. In those negations, there is no menace.

Barth on evil

There is a long tradition of philosophical writing about the problem

of evil in which a good many, if not most, of Barths examples of the
negative aspect of creation are cited as evils: pain, suering, loss, failure,
inrmity. Barth dismisses this whole tradition as an insult to Creator
and creature (). Over and over in his discussion of creation and providence he makes the point that we are creatures of a denite sort with
denite limitations; and that, in being creatures of our sort placed in a
world of our sort, and as a consequence regularly undergoing negatively
valorized experiences, we are to see Gods gracious hand.
Its part of our design plan, part of being a properly functioning human
being, that we should dislike pain, suering, loss, failure, inrmity that
we should experience them negatively. And its a well-nigh inevitable consequence of creatures with our design plan living in a world of this present
sort that we would in fact experience pain, suering, loss, failure, inrmity. Its well-nigh inevitable that experiences that are in fact negatively
valorized would come our way. About all this, there is, as such, nothing
bad. These negative experiences are not, as such, evils. To creatures of
our sort, living in a world of this present sort, experiencing these sorts of
things, and experiencing them negatively, God said Yes.
Often its possible to see a rationale to some negative aspect of our constitution or existence. In general, minus these negative aspects, human
life would be precarious and accid. Precarious, if, upon breaking bones,
we felt no pain, or didnt mind if we did; accid, if, upon failing in some
endeavor, we felt no disappointment, or didnt mind if we did. Its true
that in the negative aspect of our existence we are peculiarly open to the
incursions of das Nichtige. Viewed from its negative aspect, creation is as
it were on the frontier of nothingness and orientated towards it ().

That the creature may continue to be in virtue of the divine preservation does not mean that
either as an individual or in its totality it is a creature without any limits. It may continue to be as
a creature within its limits. It may have its place in space, and its span in time. It may begin at one
point and end at another. It may come, and stay, and go. It may comprehend the earth but not
heaven. It may be free here, but bound there; open at this point, but closed at that. It may understand one thing, but not another; be capable of one thing, but not another; accomplish one thing
but not another. That it may be in this way, within its limits, is not at all an imperfection, an evil
necessity, an obscure fate. Were we in a position to compare and comprehend all the possibilities
of all creatures, and the possibilities of the individual with those of the totality, we should be
astonished at the magnicent breadth of these limits. And certainly it is not a curse but a blessing
that there are these limits to humanity and creation, and that in some cases they are notoriously
narrow limits, of which the brevity of human life is only a single if rather drastic example. The
creature must not exist like the unhappy centre of a circle which has no periphery. It must exist in
a genuine circle, its individual environment. It has freedom to experience and accomplish that
which is proper to it, to do that which it can do, and to be satised. It is in this freedom that it is
preserved by God ().

Inquiring about God

But the fact that this negative aspect of our existence places us on the
frontier of das Nichtige, and makes us peculiarly open to its incursions,
by no means implies that this negative aspect is to be identied with the
actual incursions of das Nichtige.
To confuse the negative aspect of human existence with evil is, for one
thing, an insult to Creator and creature. Since Gods Word became esh,
He Himself has acknowledged that the distinct reality of the world created by Him is in both its forms, with its Yes and its No, that of the world
which He willed. In the knowledge of Jesus Christ we must abandon
the obvious prejudice against the negative aspect of creation and confess
that God has planned and made all things well, even on the negative side.
In the knowledge of Jesus Christ it is inadmissible to seek nothingness
here ().
But in this confusion an error is also made in relation to nothingness itself.
Being sought where he is not to be found, the enemy goes unrecognised. Being
understood as a side or aspect or distinctive form of creation, nothingness is
brought into a positive relationship with Gods will and work. Its nature and
existence are attributed to God, to His will and responsibility, and the menacing
and corruption of creation by das Nichtige are understood as His intention and
act and therefore as a necessary and tolerable part of creaturely existence. We
cannot really fear and loathe nothingness. We cannot consider and treat it as a
real enemy. ()

DAS NICHTIGE

There is something right in the two misconceptions we have discussed.

What is right is the underlying intuition that evil has to do with the
negative with negativity, with nullity, with not-ness, if we may speak
thus. The intuition was of course present already in the patristics, and
earlier yet, in the classical Greeks, nding expression in their suggestion
that evil is a lack of being, of a certain sort. The error in the misconceptions we have discussed lies in the particular identication made. The
challenge is to nd that precise negativity, that precise nullity, that precise
not-ness, which constitutes evil.
Barths proposal is that evil is that negating, nullifying dynamic or
power which opposes and resists God, which is itself subjected to and
overcome by His opposition and resistance, and which in this twofold
determination as the reality that negates and is negated by Him, is
totally distinct from Him. The true nothingness is that which brought
Jesus Christ to the cross, and that which He defeated there (). The

Barth on evil

fundamental point Barth wishes to make here is that the negativity that
constitutes evil in all its forms can be identied only if God is brought
into the picture. Unless we bring God in, well miss its nature. There
is at work in reality a power, a dynamic, toward the negating of Gods
purposes and desires, which in turn God negates. Evil is that. Evil is not
just a factor the factor, say, of things going amiss with respect to Gods
purposes and desires. Evil is the dynamic toward the frustrating of those
purposes and desires. The dynamic toward the negating of those purposes
and desires. A power of negating Gods will that in turn God negates. So
as to distinguish it from all those forms of negativity of which we have
already taken note from non-being, from that which is not, from negations, from the negative aspects of creaturely life Barth chooses to call
it nothingness, das Nichtige. The choice is not arbitrary; he thinks that
this is what Heidegger and Sartre had their eye on when they spoke of
nothingness.
An obvious question is whether its right to identify this dynamic
toward the active negating of Gods purposes and desires, with that ontological menace of which we spoke earlier, and which Barth also called das
Nichtige. Isnt Barth using das Nichtige equivocally?
There is indeed a dierence that must not be overlooked. The menacing tendency of creation to sink back into non-existence is averted by
God. Were God not to avert that menace, the evil of all evils would
take place, viz., the disappearance of creation, thus negating Gods
purposes and desires in the most fundamental way possible. In fact,
however, ontological menace does not become ontological catastrophe.
Gods negating of the negating power that is ontological menace takes
the form of preventing that power from being actualized. The creation
still exists. God providentially preserves it. By contrast, the menace that
is das Nichtige in its other form is not averted. Evil occurs. In this case,
Gods negating of the negating power takes the form of opposing its
incursions.
Yet there remains something of importance common to ontological
menace, on the one hand, and to that negating of Gods purposes and
desires that is evil, on the other hand: both are dynamics, powers, present
in the created order, which menace Gods will. It is that shared character of menacing dynamic that requires us to see these two phenomena
together, and entitles us to call them both das Nichtige. In one of das
Nichtige s two major forms, the menacing dynamic is averted before being
actualized; in the other, the menacing dynamic is actualized before being
defeated.

Inquiring about God

What sort of reality are we to ascribe to das Nichtige? Barth asks. We

cant say that its nothing, i.e., that it does not exist. God takes it into
account. He is concerned with it. He strives against it, resists and overcomes it. If we accept this, we cannot argue that nothingness is
nothing, i.e., it does not exist. That which confronts God in this way,
and is seriously treated by Him, is surely not nothing or non-existent.
All conceptions or doctrine which would deny or diminish or minimise
this are untenable from the Christian standpoint. Nothingness is not
nothing (). And obviously its not God. Is it then a creature? Perhaps
an angel that has freely chosen to oppose God, as much of the Christian
tradition would have said?
Barths rejection of this suggestion is brief brief for him, that is
()! Several points of response come to mind. For one thing, it
makes no sense to identify das Nichtige, in its persona of ontological menace, with some fallen creature; the menacing tendency to sink back into
not existing is of the wrong ontological category to be identied with a
creature. And if it were a creature, why wouldnt God just let it do what
it tends to do; viz., sink back into non-existence? Furthermore, as we
shall see in more detail shortly, Barths understanding of freely chosen
evil action sin is that though it is the agents own act, for which the
agent is responsible, nonetheless it is also surrender to the alien power of
an adversary (). If then we identify that alien power with some spiritual creature, we shall have to say that the sinful choices of that adversarial creature are themselves not made under the inuence of any alien
power whatsoever. These, I say, are points of response that come to mind.
Barths actual response is dierent from any of them. In the biblical view,
God sees and therefore treats all things, including nothingness, with justice, i.e., according to their true being (). Gods attitude toward das
Nichtige is total condemnation; for das Nichtige is falsehood in its very
being (). Justice for das Nichtige consists of total annihilation. That
cannot be said of any creature not even of a rebellious angel.
Barth does not deny the existence of demons and demonic powers.
What he argues instead is that those are to be identied with das Nichtige
in its persona as evil. The language of demons and demonic powers is
another way of speaking of das Nichtige.
Everything which has to be said about [nothingness] is also to be said of demons
as the opponents of Gods heavenly ambassadors [i.e., the angels]. They are. As
we cannot deny the peculiar existence of nothingness, we cannot deny their
existence. They are null and void, but they are not nothing. Their being is neither that of God nor that of the creature, neither that of heavenly creatures nor

Barth on evil

that of earthly, for they are neither the one nor the other. They are not divine but
non-divine and anti-divine. On the other hand, God has not created them, and
therefore they are not creaturely. This is all to be said of demons as of nothingness. They are not dierent from the latter. They do not stand apart. They
derive from it. They themselves are always nothingness. They are nothingness in
its dynamic, to the extent that it has form and power and movement and activity. This is how Holy Scripture understands this alien element. ()

Demons are the exponents of das Nichtige, the powers of falsehood in a

thousand dierent forms ().
So what then is the ontological location of das Nichtige? What is its
ontological category? If, on the one hand, its not simply nothing; but
if, on the other hand, its neither God nor any of the powers and activities of God, nor any creature nor any of the powers and activities of any
creature, what is it? Its a power; yes. But its not a power of either God or
creature. There seems to be nothing of which it is a power a free-oating
power. We must conclude, says Barth, that it exists in a third way of its
own (). Which is, of course, not to say anything more than that it is
neither God nor creature. In addition to God and creatures, to their powers and activities, there is das Nichtige.
Though we do not know how to locate das Nichtige ontologically, we
do know its nature, its identity, says Barth. The identity of das Nichtige is
determined by its relation to Gods purposes and desires. Specically, the
identity of das Nichtige consists in its being that power and dynamic that
negates Gods will and which, in turn, God negates. Gods will is thus, in
an odd way, the condition of there being das Nichtige and the basis of its
identity. Only because God said Yes to certain possibilities, and therein
No to others, can there be any such thing as opposition to Gods will.
God says Yes, and therefore says No to that to which He has not said
Yes. He works according to his purpose, and in so doing rejects and dismisses all that gainsays it. It is only on this basis that nothingness is,
but on this basis it really is. As God is Lord on the left hand as well, He
is the basis and Lord of nothing too ().

In pp. , Barth strongly suggests that our wish, as theoreticians, to locate das Nichtige ontologically, thus to assign to it its proper place in an ontological system, represents a victory for das
Nichtige. Instead of opposing it with tooth and fang as that which does not t into Gods creation, as that which menaces creation, we try to show how it does t in. Let us only integrate the
devil and the kingdom of demons and evil into the same system in which elsewhere and according to their dierent character we also treat of God and Christ and true man and the angels! Let
us only do this kingdom the honour of taking it seriously in this sense! Nothing could suit
it better than to nd a sure place in the philosophical outlook of man or the world of human
thought, securing recognition as a serious co-worker and opponent of God and man (). I nd
this unconvincing!

Inquiring about God

So far, so good. But Barth succumbs to the temptation to say that

Gods negative will is not only the necessary condition of anything having the identity of being the dynamic of negating Gods will that God in
turn negates, but also that it is the sucient condition for the existence
of that dynamic. The passage quoted just above continues, That which
God renounces and abandons in virtue of His decision is not merely
nothing. It is nothingness, and has as such its own being. Nothingness
is that which God does not will. It lives only by the fact that it is that
which God does not will. But it does live by this fact. For not only
what God wills, but what He does not will, is potent, and must have a
real correspondence. What really corresponds to that which God does
not will is nothingness (). The passage is less than decisively clear
on the issue at hand. Barths thinking appears to be that if God said
No, then theres something to which God said No. But since that was
not some previously existing creature, nor some entity whose existence
was entirely independent of God, it must be the case that that to which
God said No exists on account of God saying No to it. That, I say,
appears to be Barths reasoning in the passage; but its not entirely clear.
I take the following passage to conrm that that was in fact how he
was thinking: the demons (i.e., das Nichtige) are only as God arms
Himself and the creature and thus pronounces a necessary No. They
exist in virtue of the fact [my emphasis] that His turning to involves a
turning from, His election a rejection. They are as they are judged,
repudiated and excluded by God ().
It turns out, then, that Barths thinking here is wholly parallel to his
thinking about das Nichtige in its persona of ontological menace. In creation, Gods Yes implies a No. And his Yes amounts to his saying Yes to
something ; those are the creatures. Likewise, his saying No amounts to his
saying No to something ; those are the uncreated possibles. Gods saying
Yes to the creatures is what brings them into existence; and Gods saying
No to the unactualized possibles is what brings them into existence. So
too, within creation, Gods saying No to all that threatens the well-being
of the creature brings about the power of threatening the creature. For if
God says No to threats to the creature, then there is something to which
God says No. And Gods saying No to those threats is what brings them
into existence. The reasoning is as awed in this latter case as we saw it to
be in the other.
It turns out, then, that in spite of his claim that evil is incomprehensible and inexplicable, there is much about evil that Barth professes to
comprehend and explain more than he should. We know the nature,

Barth on evil

the essence, of evil. Likewise, we know why there is something that has
this essence. And in a certain way we even know, as we shall see shortly,
why the menace to the creature is not averted in the case of evil, whereas,
by contrast, it is averted in the case of ontological menace. What we do
not know is the ontology of evil other than that it is a power; we dont
understand what sort of being it is that is neither Creator nor creature, yet
brought about by the Creator.
Though its been implicit in whats been said, theres one point worth
highlighting before we leave this part of our topic. That which constitutes the essence of das Nichtige is the very same thing that gives to it its
character of evil. For what is fundamentally denitive of evil, from the
Christian standpoint, is resistance to grace; and such resistance, as we
have seen, is the essence of das Nichtige.
What God positively wills and performs in the opus proprium of His election,
of His creation, of His preservation and overruling rule of the creature is
His grace. What God does not will and therefore negates and rejects, what
can thus be only the object of His opus alienum, of his jealousy, wrath and
judgment, is a being that refuses and resists and therefore lacks His grace. This
being which is alien and adverse to grace and therefore without it, is that of
das Nichtige and this is evil in the Christian sense, namely, what is alien and
adverse to grace, and therefore without it. For it is Gods honour and right to
be gracious, and this is what das Nichtige contests. It is also the salvation and
right of the creature to receive and live by the grace of God, and this is what it
disturbs and obstructs. ()

DAS NICHTIGE

One of the forms assumed by das Nichtige s incursions into the created
order is sin. The point of saying this is that though sin is mans own act,
achievement, and guilt (), its more than that. Its something under
which we suer in a way which is sometimes palpable but sometimes we
can only sense and sometimes is closely hidden. In Holy Scripture, while
mans full responsibility for its commission is maintained, even sin itself
is described as his surrender to the alien power of an adversary. He is
led astray and harms himself, or rather lets himself be harmed. He is not
merely a thief but one who has himself fallen among thieves (). From

Cf. : The reality of nothingness is not seen sharply enough, even in its concrete form
as sin, if sin is understood only generally as aberration from God and disobedience to His will.
Th is is true enough, but we cannot stop at this generalization. Otherwise we might escape
and extricate ourselves with the assertion that we are men, creatures, and not God, and that

Inquiring about God

this we can infer that Barth would dismiss as woefully inadequate any
attempt to account for evil by locating it in free will wrongly used, coupled with the overriding value God attaches, in creation and providence,
to free will however used, rightly or wrongly. The sinful exercise of free
will is to be understood as not only an action of the agent, but also as
submission to the power of das Nichtige.
Barth insists, emphatically, that sin is not the only concrete form of
das Nichtige in its persona of evil. Das Nichtige also manifests itself in all
that exhibits and tends toward what he regularly calls evil and death,
meaning by evil not the ills which are inseparably bound up with
creaturely existence in virtue of the negative aspect of creation, but evil
as something wholly anomalous which threatens and imperils this existence; and meaning by death not dying as the natural termination of
life, but death as the total opposite of human ourishing, namely, the
ultimate irruption and triumph of that alien power which annihilates
creaturely existence and thus discredits and disclaims the Creator ().
Das Nichtige aims at the comprehensive negation of the creature and its
nature (). And it is absolutely essential that it be seen in its form
of evil and death, as well as in its form of sin, if we are to understand
what is at issue and to what we refer [I]n the incarnation God exposed
Himself to nothingness in order to repel and defeat it. He did so in
order to destroy the destroyer. The Gospel records of the miracles and acts
of Jesus are not just formal proofs of His Messiahship but as such, they
are objective manifestations of His character as the Conqueror not only
of sin but also of evil and death, as the Destroyer of the destroyer, as the
Saviour in the most inclusive sense ().

therefore our aberration from God, and to that extent our disobedience, and therefore sin and
nothingness, are basically no more than our essential and natural imperfection in contrast
with His perfection. In sin as the concrete form of nothingness we should then be dealing
again with merely the negative aspect of creation. Sin is not only the creatures act of disobedience, but also the creatures submission to das Nichtige hence, the concrete form of das
Nichtiges opposition to God.
Cf. p. : not death as a natural limitation but eternal death, the enemy and annihilator of life.
And p. : The New Testament says that [Christ] suered death for the forgiveness of the sins
of many, but it also says, and the two statements must not be dissociated, that He did so in order
to take away the power of death, real death, death as the condemnation and destruction of the
creature, death as the oender against God and the last enemy.
Barth adds that It is a serious matter that all the Western as opposed to Eastern Church has
invariably succeeded in minimising and devaluating, and still does so today, this New Testament
emphasis. And Protestantism especially has always been far too moralistic and spiritualistic
().

Barth on evil

I think there can be no doubt that in his account of evil at least in that
part of it that we have seen thus far Barth satises the requirement he
set for himself of honoring the holiness of God. To das Nichtige in general, and to das Nichtige in its persona of evil, in particular that is, to
das Nichtige as manifested in sins, evils, and eternal death God unrelentingly and unwaveringly says No. The essence of evil is that it is that
to which God says No; and there really are things to which God says No,
namely, sins, evils, and eternal death. Barth wants nothing to do with
any of the multitude of theories which say that those phenomena that he,
Barth, identies as sins and evils are not really evil but merely negative
aspects of human existence like the dissonances in a Bach fugue that,
if heard all by themselves, are repulsive, but that, when heard within the
context of the whole, are seen to contribute indispensably to the goodness
of the whole. Its not the case that reality is good through and through.
There is evil in it: that which is in opposition to God and to which God is
therefore in opposition. God does not survey the whole with blissful satisfaction, nding nothing to which God wishes to say No. God is angry,
wrathful. Barths metaphors for God are the metaphors of one engaged
in combat, not the metaphors of one engaged in blissful contemplation.
Battleeld, not art museum. Rather than being a majestic, passive and
beatic God on high, God is the Adversary of this adversary ().
But what about the other requirement, of honoring the omnipotence of
God? If things arent going as God wants, if reality is laced through with
that to which God says No, isnt God radically lacking in power? Not at
all, says Barth. The issue is not whether God is omnipotent, but of the
form that omnipotence takes. Gods omnipotence is not that of one who
nds nothing to which to say No, no menace and no incursion; its that
of one who wins the battle against that to which he says No. Das Nichtige
has no perpetuity. God not only has perpetuity, but is Himself the basis,
essence and sum of all being. And for all its niteness and mutability even
His creature has perpetuity the perpetuity which he wills to grant it
in fellowship with Himself, and which cannot be lacking in this fellowship but is given it to all eternity. Nothingness, however, is not created by
God, nor is there any covenant with it. Hence it has no perpetuity ().
It is broken, judged, refuted and destroyed at the central point, in the
mighty act of salvation accomplished in Jesus Christ ().
In this is to be seen the incredible and real mystery of the free grace
of God, that He makes His own the cause of the creature (). There

Inquiring about God

was no necessity in this, Barth insists. God might have been content
with the fact that in creating and preserving he overcomes the ontological menace of das Nichtige, separated, negated, rejected and abandoned
it (). He might have declared that such inroads as das Nichtige makes
within creation are the business of the creature. Gods own battle, against
the tendency of creation to slide back into non-existence, is won; let the
creature now take over. He might have remained aloof and detached,
a majestic, passive and beatic God on high (). In fact God did not.
God did not because:
having created the creature, He has pledged His faithfulness to it. That is to
say, He whom nothingness has no power to oend is prepared on behalf of His
creature to be primarily and properly oended and humiliated, attacked and
injured by nothingness. Though Adam is fallen and disgraced, he is not too
low for God to make Himself his Brother, and to be for him a God who must
strangely contend for his status, honour and right. For the sake of this Adam
God becomes poor. He lets a catastrophe which might be quite remote from
Him approach Him and aect His very heart. He does this of His free grace.
For He is under no compulsion. He might act as the erroneous view postulates [B]ut He descends to the depths, and concerns Himself with nothingness, because in His goodness He does not will to cease to be concerned for His
creature. He would rather be unblest with His creature than be the blessed
God of an unblest creature. He actually becomes a creature, and thus makes
the cause of the creature His own in the most concrete reality and not just in
appearance, really taking its place. ()

Barth adds that there are few heresies so pernicious as that of a God
who faces nothingness more or less unaected and unconcerned, and the
parallel doctrine of man as one who must engage in independent conict
against it ().
Barth concedes that the defeat of das Nichtige achieved in the mighty
act of salvation accomplished in Jesus Christ is not yet visible or recognisable (). The nal revelation of its destruction has not yet taken
place and all creation must still await and expect it (). In faith we
know, says Barth, that it is now objectively defeated as such in Jesus
Christ. It cannot be doubted (). But its not evident. The blindness
of our eyes and the cover which is still over us [obscures] the prospect of
the kingdom of God already established as the only kingdom undisputed
by evil ().
These words suggest that now, after the death and resurrection of
Jesus, it only appears that theres evil; there isnt really. But that cant be
Barths meaning; for theres nothing more fundamental to his account

Barth on evil

of evil than his insistence that there really is evil in the world. What he
has to mean is the following: once upon a time there was reason to think
that the dominion of the powers of darkness was perhaps equal, or even
superior, to that of God. However, in the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ, God has defeated the powers; accordingly, therein it is manifest
that their dominion is not, and was not, equal to Gods. All along it was
only a semblance of validity (), that is, a semblance of dominion
equal or superior to Gods. Nonetheless, though the powers of darkness
were defeated in Jesus Christ, and their dominion therein displayed as
inferior, the incursion of those powers is not yet over. So much is this the
case, that to our ordinary secular eyes theres about as much reason as
ever to wonder whether perhaps the powers of darkness are not equal or
even superior to those of God. Its not evident that das Nichtige lost the
battle. That, so I suggest, is what Barth has in mind.
Theres an obvious question: Why, if das Nichtige lost the battle, do its
incursions continue? If das Nichtige has been defeated, then it can have
even its semblance of validity only under the decree of God. What it now
is and does, it can be and do only in the hand of God (). So why do
its incursions continue?
Barths answer is that there is a legitimate place here for a favourite
concept of the older dogmatics that of permission. God still permits
His kingdom not to be seen by us, and to that extent He still permits
us to be a prey to nothingness (). And indeed, what else could Barth
say at this point? But is permission of evil compatible with the holiness
of God? Hasnt Barth, at the end of the day, failed to satisfy one of the
conditions he set for himself, that in his account of evil he fully honor the
holiness of God? Can a holy God permit evil?
The answer is surely that introducing permission of this sort at this
point does not, so far forth, compromise the holiness of God. Sins and
evils remain evil; they are not reconceived as negative aspects. The reason is that, in general, one may permit something to happen that one
could prevent while nonetheless disapproving of it, desiring that it not
happen. Ones reason for permitting it might be of many dierent sorts;
but if its to be a morally acceptable reason, it will have to be of the form
that one (non-culpably) believed that preventing the evil would not secure
a greater good, overall, than permitting it. Which implies that ones permission occurs within the context of being in control of the situation.
Clearly its along these lines that Barth is thinking. God thinks it good
that we should exist as if He had not yet mastered [das Nichtige] ().

Inquiring about God

The truth is that the incursions of das Nichtige are now, strangely, an
instrument of [Gods] will and action (). Even though das Nichtige
does not will to do so it is forced to serve [God], to serve His Word and work,
the honour of His Son, the proclamation of the Gospel, the faith of the community, and therefore the way which He Himself wills to go within and with
His creation until its day is done. The defeated, captured and mastered enemy of
God has as such become His servant. Good care is taken that he should always
show himself a strange servant. Yet it is even more important to reect that
good care is taken by this One that even nothingness should be one of the things
of which it is said that they must work together for good to them that love Him.
()

Barth makes no attempt to describe the general pattern of sins and

evils working together for good; perhaps he thinks there is no general
pattern.
Even as subject in this strange way to Gods providence, however, das
Nichtige has no perpetuity. As God fulls his true and positive work,
His negative work becomes pointless and redundant and can be terminated and ended. Barth adds that
it is of major importance at this point that we should not become involved in the
logical dialectic that if God loves, elects and arms eternally He must also hate
and therefore reject and negate eternally. There is nothing to make Gods activity on the left hand as necessary and perpetual as His activity on the right.
This negative activity of God has as such, in accordance with its meaning and
nature, a denite frontier, and this is to be found at the point where it attains
its goal and accomplishes its purpose. With the attainment of the goal the opus
alienum of God also reaches its end. ()

What does Barth mean? Does he mean that when the battle is over, das
Nichtige itself will have disappeared, so that there is no longer any menace to the creature, neither ontological nor existential? Or does he mean
that though the menace of both sorts will remain, the menace will be no
more than menace? No longer will there be an incursion of das Nichtige
into the life of the creature? No longer will there be evil sins, evils, and
death? Does he mean that just as ontological menace has always been stymied, existential menace will be stymied as well?

Th is is the strangeness that Barth had in mind when, in a passage quoted earlier, from the beginning of the section on God and Nothingness, he said that there is amongst the objects of Gods
providence an alien factor. It cannot escape Gods providence but is comprehended by it. The
manner, however, in which this is done is highly peculiar in accordance with the particular
nature of this factor ().

Barth on evil

Barths language certainly suggests the former interpretation. He

doesnt say that evil has no perpetuity; he says that das Nichtige has no
perpetuity. But if thats what he wants to say, doesnt his earlier line of
reasoning, which I criticized, now come back to haunt him I mean,
his reasoning that Gods Yes inevitably involves a No as well, and that, if
God says No, then thereby and thereupon there is that to which God said
No, this being the power of das Nichtige? For presumably Gods opus proprium, Gods Yes-saying, continues; hence, by the above reasoning, das
Nichtige also continues. Or does Gods opus proprium not continue? Does
Gods work cease? Does God rest?
The clue to how Barth was thinking is to be found in a few paragraphs
that occur in the passage on The Divine Preserving, in section , where
Barth discusses the eternal preservation of the creature. Temporal creation is destined to be incorporated into the eternal life of God; when thus
incorporated, all menace will have disappeared. The Yes that is Gods
creation and preservation will have ceased; likewise the Yes that is Gods
providential armation of the temporal well-being of the creature will
have ceased. God will be at rest; and the creature at rest within God.
The time will come, says Barth, when the created world as a whole
will only have been. In the nal act of salvation history, i.e., in the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Foundation and Deliverer and head of the
whole of creation, the history of creation will also reach its goal and end.
It need not progress any further, it will have fullled its purpose. It
will not need any continuance of temporal existence (). This does
not mean the end of Gods preservation, however. Gods preservation will
continue only now as eternal preservation, not temporal. Eternal preservation does not mean a continuation of the [temporal] existence of the
creature. To what end and for what purpose could it continue to be when
already it has had and fullled its course ? ().
The eternal preservation of the creature of God means negatively that
its destruction is excluded (). Were its destruction to be permitted, that
would mean that the non-existent had triumphed over the creature of God,
that by giving such power to the non-existent God had nally revoked His
own work, and that He had nally retracted that Yes and given Himself
to isolation (). However, by means of that which He did on behalf of
the creature when He Himself became creature, He has in fact broken the
power of the non-existent against the creature when He Himself became
creature, destroying it and removing the threat of it ().
The eternal preservation of the creature means positively that it can continue
eternally before Him. God is the One who was, and is, and is to come. With

Inquiring about God

Him the past is future, and both past and future are present. And one day
to speak in temporal terms when the totality of everything that was and is and
will be will only have been, then in the totality of its temporal duration it will
still be open and present to Him, and therefore preserved: eternally preserved.
Everything will be present to Him exactly as it was or is or will be, in all its reality, in the whole temporal course of its activity, in its strength or weakness, in
its majesty or meanness. He will not allow anything to perish, but will hold it in
the hollow of His hand as He has always done, and does and will. He will allow
it to partake of His own eternal life. And in this way the creature will continue
to be, in its limitation, even in its limited temporal duration. In all the unrest
of its being in time it will be enfolded by the rest of God, and in Him it will
itself be at rest, just as even now in all its unrest it is hidden and can be at rest in
the rest of God. This is the eternal preservation of God. ()

Karl Barths discussion of evil is extraordinarily rich, insightful, imaginative, and provocative lled with observations and emphases that the
Christian philosopher ought to take seriously. I think, to cite just a few
examples, of his observations concerning what I have called ontological
menace, of his insistence that the negative aspects of our existence are
not to be regarded as evil, of his insistence that sin, while certainly the act
of the person who sins, is also submission to an alien power, of his insistence that the nature of evil is determined by its negative relation to Gods
desires and purposes, of his insistence that God does not survey creation
with unalloyed bliss but is engaged in combat as one who is wounded
and wrathful, of his insistence that Gods omnipotence is to be located in
Gods winning the battle against menace and evil rather than in everything happening as God wishes, and, most fundamentally, of his insistence that evil is a power a nullifying, negating, nihilating power. These
particular points all seem to me true as well as important.
Along the way in my presentation of Barths thought I have made some
critical comments; just now I have expressed agreement on several fundamental points. This is the merest beginning of the critical engagement
that Barths thought merits. On this occasion it is impossible to do more,
however. In closing, let me merely call attention to the fundamental
structure of Barths account of evil, and contrast his account with some of
the major options present in the philosophical tradition.
I judge that the most fundamental points at which Barths account
diers from most of the philosophical accounts of evil is in the insistence

Barth on evil

that evil is a power, in the insistence that the negative aspects of our constitution and situation are not evil, in the insistence that evil can accordingly not be identied by reference to such negative aspects, and in the
insistence that God is wounded and angered by much of what transpires
in creation. On that last point, Barth diers not only from most of the
philosophical tradition, but from much if not most of the theological tradition as well; perhaps that is also true for the second and third points.
Barth himself discusses (), in some detail, his disagreements on
these points with the great and mighty Leibniz, and in great detail
his disagreements with Schleiermacher (while also vigorously defending
Schleiermacher against a number of misguided objections).
The traditional account to which Barths account comes closest is the
free will account that is, the account which says that evil is due to the
free agency of human and angelic/demonic persons. Barth, of course,
rejects this account. He holds that human sin must be understood, in
part, as submission to an alien, God-defying power; and he holds that that
power cannot be identied with any creature whatsoever. Nonetheless,
both accounts hold that God is genuinely displeased by what transpires
in the world; theres genuine evil. Furthermore, its open to those who
embrace the free will account to join with Barth in saying that God is
wounded and angered by what transpires in creation. The free will account
joins Barths in resisting the temptation to eliminate genuine evil by
treating sins and evils as negative aspects of our nature and situation, all
of these sins and evils together making an indispensable contribution to
the greater good, thus grounding Gods unalloyed bliss.
Barths strategy for resisting the lure of the negative-aspects account
can be seen as consisting of three moves. The rst of these is his claim
that creation without ontological menace is impossible, coupled with
his claim that Gods desire for fellowship with the creature and for the
creatures ourishing unavoidably brings about ontological menace;
only the eventual incorporation of creation into the eternal life of God
can remove this menace. Second, Barth assumes, without ever, so far
as I have noticed, making a point of the matter, that the ontological
menace is of such a character that Gods only option for dealing with
it was to overcome it after it was actualized, rather than to stymie it.
And third, God for Gods own good reasons now permits the ontological menace to continue its incursions, these good reasons consisting, at
least in part, in the fact that evil itself is now forced to contribute to the
good of the creature.

Inquiring about God

In the free will account there is nothing like the rst two of these
moves. At the point of the third move, however, there is close resemblance. The free will account is fundamentally a trade-o account. God
decided to trade o the situation of no evil coupled with no free agents,
for the greater overall good of free agency, human and cosmic, coupled
with the evil of their sins and ensuing evils. If, for each situation in which
a given agent might nd itself, there is a fact of the matter as to what
that agent would freely choose in that situation, and if God foreknew all
these facts, then God knew in advance the details of the trade-o God
was making at creation. If there are no such facts, or if there are but God
did not know them at creation, then at creation God would have held
in reserve the option of calling the whole thing o should the point be
reached where the trade-o was no longer acceptable.
Barths third move, like the free will account as a whole, consists of
viewing God as making a trade-o. Having defeated das Nichtige at the
cross, God could have called to a halt its ingressions. But God did not,
for reasons that in their totality are known to God alone; God permits
das Nichtige to continue to work evil. The details of the trade-o are signicantly dierent from that of the free will account. In the Barthian
account it is das Nichtige that God permits to continue to work evil
das Nichtige being the uncreated power that, against but mysteriously on
account of Gods will, ineluctably accompanies creation and providence;
in the free will account, it is creatures possessing the power of free agency
who are permitted to continue to work evil. Furthermore, on the Barthian
account, the goods that ensue from permitting the power of evil to continue to work its evil ways are presumably diverse as already noted,
Barth makes no attempt to generalize; on the free will account, the good
in view is just one, viz., the great good of free agency. So the dierences
are signicant. Nonetheless, the nal move in Barths three-part strategy
is also a trade-o move: God trades the good of stopping das Nichtige in
its tracks for the greater overall good that ensues from permitting it to
continue its incursions for a while. Its hard to see how an account that
both honors Gods omnipotence and, by acknowledging that there genuinely is evil in the world, not just negative aspects, honors Gods holiness, could be anything other than, in part at least, a trade-o account.
The light shines in the darkness; and the darkness has not overcome it John
:.

Tertullians enduring question

What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens, asked Tertullian in memorable, bitingly eloquent words:
the Church with the Academy, the Christian with the heretic? Our principles
come from the Porch of Solomon, who himself taught that the Lord is to be
sought in simplicity of heart. I have no use for a Stoic or a Platonic or a dialectic
[i.e., Aristotelian] Christianity. After Jesus Christ we have no need of speculation, after the Gospel, no need of research. Once we come to believe, we have
no desire to believe anything else; for the rst article of our faith is that there is
nothing else we have to believe.

Tertullians aim, in his Prescriptions against Heretics, was to persuade his

readers to stay away from heresies. Just before the passage quoted he had
been inquiring into the root of these doctrines of men and of daemons.
Philosophy is the root that repository of worldly wisdom, that rash
interpreter of the divine nature and order. Heretics are equipped by philosophy. From philosophy come those fables, those endless genealogies
and fruitless questionings, those words that spread like cancer, that we
nd in the heretics. Heresies are generated for itching ears by the ingenuity of that worldly wisdom which the Lord called foolishness. Lift
a heretic and youll nd a philosopher.
It was to hold us back from the futile and deceiving speculations of
the heretics, says Tertullian, that the apostle Paul testied expressly in
his letter to the Colossians that we should beware of philosophy. Take
heed lest anyone beguile you through philosophy or vain deceit, after
the tradition of men, against the providence of the Holy Spirit. Paul had

Prescriptions against Heretics, . Translated and edited by S. L. Greenslade, Library of Christian

Classics: Vol. V, Early Latin Theology (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, ).
Prescriptions, .

Inquiring about God

been at Athens, and in his argumentative encounters there had become

acquainted with that human wisdom of the philosophers which attacks
and perverts truth, being itself divided up into its own swarm of heresies
by its mutually antagonistic sects.
Having located the root of heresy in philosophy, Tertullian then poses
his rhetorical question: What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens, the
Church with the Academy, the Christian with the heretic? Be done, he
says, with Stoicized Christianity, with Platonized Christianity, with dialectic Christianity. Were Tertullian living in our own day his list would be
much longer: be done with Kantianized Christianity, with Hegelianized
Christianity, with deconstructionist Christianity. Be done with them all.
The stance of the Christian toward all attempts at worldly wisdom must
be unrelenting opposition:
Would to God that no heresies had ever been necessary in order that those
who are approved may be made manifest! We would then never be required
to try our strength in contests about the soul with philosophers, those patriarchs of heretics, as they may fairly be called. The apostle Paul already foresaw
the ensuing conicts between philosophy and the truth. He oered his warning
about philosophy after he had been at Athens, had become acquainted with that
loquacious city, and had there gotten a taste of its huckstering wiseacres and talkers. It will be for Christians to clear away those noxious vapors, exhaled from
philosophy, which obscure the clear and wholesome atmosphere of truth. They
will do so both by shattering to pieces the arguments which are drawn from the
principles of things meaning those of the philosophers and by opposing to
them the maxims of heavenly wisdom that is, such as are revealed by the Lord;
in order that both the pitfalls with which philosophy captivates the heathen may
be removed, and the means employed by heresy to shake the faith of Christians
may be destroyed.

There is danger confronting those Christians who set out to shatter the
arguments of the philosophers: they may themselves be seduced by those
arguments and become heretics. The danger cannot be avoided; some in
the community must oppose heresy by uncovering its roots in philosophy
and then attacking those. But to those who suggest that a training in philosophy should become a more or less standard part of the education of
Christians, Tertullians answer is unequivocal as indeed are most of his
answers to most of his questions! Addressing the soul, he says:

Ibid.
On the Soul , . Translated and edited by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene
Fathers: Vol. III, Latin Christianity, Its Founder, Tertullian (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans,
reprint).

Tertullians enduring question

I call you not as one formed in the schools, trained in the libraries, nourished in
the Attic academies and porticoes, belching forth wisdom. I address you simple,
unskilled, uncultured and untaught, as those are who have you and nothing
else; I address you as a person of the road, the square, the workshop, that alone. I
want your inexperience, since no one of small experience feels any condence. I
demand of you that you consult only the things you bring with you as a human
being, the things you know either from yourself or from your author, whoever
that may be.

Tertullians question, What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?

remains as much alive today as it was in when Tertullian posed it.
Its not one of those questions that the Christian community has settled
and from there gone on to other matters. It remains an enduring question
for the Christian academic. It is, in fact, the enduring question: What
does the Christian gospel have to do with the enterprise of scholarship
in particular, with the scholarship of those who are not Christian?
The question would not have endured if Tertullians answer, or some
alternative, had been universally accepted. It would now be of interest only to antiquarians. In proclaiming that Jerusalems business with
Athens is combating those philosophies spawned by Athens that inspire
the heretics who disturb the church, Tertullian was staking out a position
within a multifaceted debate that agitated the ancient church. In particular, he was staking out a position in opposition to that articulated by his
near-contemporary, Clement of Alexandria. I think that you and I, at the
dawn of the third millennium after Christ, can still learn something by
reecting on that debate conducted by our forebears.
The picture presented by the passages from Tertullian that I have cited
is unremittingly that of disjunction and opposition. Between pagan philosophy and Holy Scripture there is no choice but to choose. Choose ye
this day whom you will serve. To be a Christian is already to have chosen. The Christian lives by Holy Scripture, in opposition to pagan philosophy. To the suggestion that some Christians should advance beyond
their acceptance of Holy Scripture to engage in philosophical speculation,
Tertullians answer is crisp: After Jesus Christ we have no need of speculation, after the Gospel, no need of research. When we come to believe,
we have no desire to believe anything else; for the rst article of our faith
is that there is nothing else we have to believe.

The Souls Testimony, . Translated and edited by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene
Fathers: Vol. III, Latin Christianity, Its Founder, Tertullian (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans,
reprint).
Quoted from Joshua :. Prescriptions, .

Inquiring about God

There were those, Clement included, who were citing the New
Testament injunction, Seek and you shall nd, to justify the project
of becoming learned Christians. Tertullians answer is eloquently
dismissive:
The reasonable exegesis of this saying turns on three points: matter, time, and
limitation. As to matter, you are to consider what is to be sought; as to time,
when, and as to limitation, how far. What you must seek is what Christ taught,
and precisely as long as you have not found it, precisely until you do nd it.
And you found it when you came to believe. You would not have believed if you
had not found, just as you would not have sought except in order to nd. Since
nding was the object of your search, and belief the result of your nding, your
acceptance of the faith bars any prolonging of seeking and nding. The very success of your seeking has set up this limitation for you. Your boundary has been
marked out by him who would not have you believe, and so would not have you
seek, outside the limits of his teaching.
If we were bound to go on seeking as long as there is any possibility of nding, simply because so much has been taught by others as well, we would always
be seeking and never believing.
I have no patience with the man who is always seeking, for he will never nd.
He is seeking where there will be no nding. I have no patience with the man
who is always knocking, for the door will never be opened. He is knocking at an
empty house. I have no patience with the man who is always asking, for he will
never be heard. He is asking one who does not hear.
But even supposing that we ought to be seeking now and ever, where should
we seek? Among the heretics, where everything is strange and hostile to our
truth? Instruction and destruction never reach us from the same quarter.
Light and darkness never come from the same source. So let us seek in our own
territory, from our own friends and on our own business, and let us seek only
what can come into question without disloyalty to the Rule of Faith.

If we are to see the full pattern of Tertullians thought, we must understand the import of those nal cryptic words. With rhetoric of hammering force, Tertullian has been arguing that it is incoherent to suggest that
Christians should engage in seeking the truth. To be a Christian is to
accept the teachings of Scripture; in and by accepting those teachings,
one ends ones search for the truth. And as to the more specic suggestion
that, in seeking the truth, Christians should not neglect to look into the
pagan philosophers, Tertullians response is that this is not only incoherent, but altogether futile and muddle-headed.
It was not Tertullians position, however, that Christians are to refrain
from all forms of intellectual endeavor; he was not an exponent of bare

Ibid., .

Tertullians enduring question

faith alone. His own writing is evidence to the contrary. It is appropriate

for Christians to try both to understand better what already they believe
and to defend that with intelligence. Provided you honor the Rule of
Faith, says Tertullian to his fellow Christians, you may seek and discuss as much as you please, and pour forth your whole desire for curious
inquiry if any point seems to you undetermined through ambiguity, or
obscure from want of clarity. There is surely some brother, a teacher gifted
with the grace of knowledge, someone among those skilled intimates of
yours, who can assist you in this, while steering you away from inquiries
that stray from the Rule of Faith.


The picture drawn by Clement was unmistakably dierent. For Clement,
the fundamental relation of Christianity to pagan philosophy was not
opposition but supersession. Pagan philosophy is not anti-Christian but subChristian. Or to speak more historically: just as the law and the prophets
served for the Hebrews as a preparation for Christ, so philosophy prepared the Greeks. In Clements own words: Philosophy was given to the
Greeks directly and primarily, until the Lord should call the Greeks. For
this was a schoolmaster to bring the Hellenic mind, as was the law, the
Hebrews, to Christ. Philosophy, therefore, was a preparation, paving the
way for him who is perfected in Christ. Using a dierent cluster of
metaphors to make the same point, Clement says that philosophy was
given to the Greeks as a covenant peculiar to them being, as it is, a steppingstone to the philosophy which is according to Christ.
As his words suggest, Clements reason for embracing this positive
picture of Greek philosophy was, at bottom, theological. Sometimes
he appeals to the general principle that, according to the teaching of
Scripture, all that is good comes from God. Since it seemed obvious to
him that there was truth in Greek philosophy, he drew the conclusion
that Greek philosophy, insofar as it has a grasp of the truth, comes from
God. In other passages, thinking not about the good in general but about
truth, Clement appeals to his understanding of what the prologue to the
Gospel of John teaches about Logos. Having described Logos, in Chapter ,

Ibid., .
Stromata I, . Translated and edited by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers,
Vol. II: Fathers of the Second Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, ).
Stromata VI, .

Inquiring about God

verse , as the true light that enlightens every man, John goes on in verse
to say that Logos became esh and dwelt among us. The conclusion
Clement drew was that the very same Logos that became incarnate in
Jesus Christ is at work in all humanity, leading them toward truth. This
is how he puts the point in one passage: Into all human beings whatsoever, but especially those who are occupied with intellectual pursuits, a
certain divine euence has been instilled; wherefore, even if reluctantly,
they confess that God is one, indestructible, unbegotten, and that somewhere above in the tracts of heaven, in His own peculiar appropriate eminence, He has an existence true and eternal from whence He surveys all
things. There were those in Clements day who said that it was through
human understanding that philosophy was discovered by the Greeks.
Clement rebukes them: I nd the Scriptures saying that understanding
is sent by God.
One version of the supersessionist view would be that Christianity has
so far superseded its two main antecedents, Hebrew revelation and Greek
philosophy, that there is no longer any point in paying attention to those
superseded antecedents. That was not Clements version. Beyond a doubt
the teaching which is according to the Savior is complete in itself and
without defect, he says, being the power and wisdom of God; the addition of Greek philosophy does not make the truth more powerful. Or
to put it the other way round: the absence of Greek philosophy would not
render the perfect Word incomplete, it would not cause the Truth to perish. Nonetheless, the study of Greek philosophy remains of great utility
for Christians.
For one thing, it is useful for warding o heresy and sophistry. The
learned Christian can distinguish sophistry from philosophy rhetoric
from dialectics, and the various sects of barbarian philosophy from the
truth itself. How necessary, then, is it for him who desires to be partaker
of the power of God to treat of intellectual subjects by philosophizing!
The philosophically learned Christian, a man of much counsel, is like
the Lydian touchstone, which is believed to possess the power of distinguishing spurious from genuine gold. Alluding to the Tertullianists of
his day, Clement observes that:
some, who think themselves naturally gifted, do not wish to touch either philosophy or logic; nay more, they do not wish to learn natural science. They demand

Exhortation, VI. Translated and edited by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers,
Vol. II: Fathers of the Second Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, ).
Stromata, VI, . Ibid., I, . Ibid., .

Tertullians enduring question

bare faith alone, as if they wished, without bestowing any care on the vine, right
away to begin gathering clusters. [Tertullian, as we saw above, does not demand
bare faith alone of all Christians.] Now the Lord is guratively described as the
vine from which, accordingly to the word, we are to take pains to gather fruit
with the art of husbandry.

In husbandry we lop, dig, bind, and perform other operations. So also

here, I call him truly learned who brings everything to bear on the truth;
so that, from geometry, music, grammar, and philosophy itself, culling
what is useful, he guards the faith against assault.
It is clear, however, that Clement did not regard the utility for apologetics of the study of Greek philosophy as exhausting its serviceability
for Christians. Indeed, that for him was not its most important use.
Though the truth proclaimed by our Savior is the truth necessary and
sucient for salvation, it is not the whole of truth. It is then the calling
of Christian intellectuals to go beyond apologetics and incorporate the
truth proclaimed by Christ into a larger picture a more comprehensive
philosophy, if you will. For this purpose, the learned Christian takes
fragments of truth from wherever he nds them. Truth as such is the one
ever-living Logos. The various sects of barbarian and Hellenic philosophy vaunt themselves as having got hold of that whole truth. In actual
fact, however, none has done more than tear o a fragment. Yet the
parts, though diering from each other, preserve their relation to the
whole. Be assured, then, that he who brings the separate fragments
together and makes them one again will contemplate the perfect Word,
the truth. The way of truth is one. But into it, as into a perennial
river, streams ow from all sides.

Disjunction or supersession, opposition or incorporation. Who was right
about the relation of Christianity to pagan learning? And who was right
about the Christian intellectual? Does the Christian intellectual study the
learning of non-Christians solely to discern the error of its ways, conning the scope of his own positive inquiries to the content of the faith
itself? Or does the Christian intellectual, convinced that Logos has dispensed portions of truth to all humanity, study such learning not only to
discern the error of its ways but also to harvest such fragments of truth as
are to be found there, with the goal of combining those, along with the

Ibid.

Ibid., .

Ibid., .

Inquiring about God

more clear, ample, and fundamental truths of the Gospel, into a larger
synthesis?
The reader will have discerned that the dispute between Clement and
Tertullian was multifaceted: a cluster of issues was under discussion, not
just one issue. From that cluster I can, on this occasion, pick out just one
for discussion one of the most important, however, namely, this: How
should Christians interpret pagan literature and philosophy? What should
be their goal and strategy of interpretation? Or more generally: How
should one interpret the textual tradition that one has inherited? Clement
espoused one goal and strategy, Tertullian, another. Neither party won
the debate in the second century; neither party has won the debate to
this day.
Though Clement believed rmly that, as the consequence of the activity of Logos, there is truth to be found in the Greek philosophers, he
did not deny that the truth to be found there is mingled with falsehood.
Neither did he deny indeed, he ardently armed that something
decisively new had taken place in world history when the Logos that
enlightens all who come into the world was eneshed in Jesus Christ.
Unlike every philosophy, be it Greek or barbarian, the teaching of Jesus
is complete in itself and without defect, being the power and wisdom of
God. Accordingly, when confronted with the teaching of some philosopher that contradicts the teaching of our Savior, the Christian does not
spend time mulling over which to accept. Everything incompatible with
the teaching of our Savior is in error; none of it is a fragment of the truth.
Clement was not Hegel born out of season. History is not a vast ongoing
series of supersessions, continuing until such time as Geist is fully manifested in the abstract thought of some philosopher. Though Christianity
supersedes both Hebrew revelation and Greek philosophy, nothing will
supersede Christianity. Our Savior did not teach us the whole of truth; he
did teach us nothing but truth; there was no falsehood mingled in. And
the truth he taught us is the most important truth, taught with a clarity never to be superseded in this present existence. The teaching of our
Savior is thus a touchstone for the Christian interpreter.
Just as Clement did not deny that the truth to be found in the Greek
philosophers is mingled with abundant error, and either of secondary
importance or lacking in full clarity, so too he did not deny that the
Greek philosophers, unlike our Savior, exhibited a multitude of vices. The
most fundamental of their vices was that they were, in Clements words,

Ibid., .

Tertullians enduring question

thieves and robbers. Echoing the then-current view that the Greek
philosophers had somehow gained direct access to Hebrew prophecy,
Clement says that before the coming of the Lord they received fragments
of the truth from the Hebrew prophets, though admittedly not with
full knowledge, and they claimed these as their own teachings, disguising some points, and treating others sophistically by their ingenuity.
Nonetheless, Clement insists that sentence of condemnation is not ignorantly to be pronounced against what is said on account of him who says it
(a point also to be kept in view in the case of those who are now alleged
to prophesy); rather, what is said must be scrutinized to see if it conforms
to the truth.
There is, thus, a denite sobriety about the Christian intellectual of
Clementine persuasion as he interprets the Greek philosophers. He does
not place them on a pedestal; he recognizes their moral failings. He does
not idolize them as the fount of all and only wisdom and clarity; he recognizes that such truth as they grasped is either of secondary importance
or but a hazy and hesitant apprehension of what our Savior taught us.
Nonetheless, theres truth in the Greek philosophers truth even about
God. And the Christian intellectual interprets principally for that truth,
so as to incorporate it within a larger synthesis. The Christian interpreter
notes, for example, that because of the divine euence at work in the
Greek philosophers, they correctly teach, even if reluctantly, that God is
one, indestructible, unbegotten, and so forth.
Anybody who takes in hand Aquinas Summa Theologiae will at once
discern Clementine hermeneutics at work. Having posed a question for
example, Whether the Existence of God is Self-Evident? Aquinas
opens his treatment by citing objections to the answer for which he will
argue. These objections almost always are, or incorporate, citations from
the tradition. Having stated objections from the tradition to his thesis,
Aquinas then announces On the contrary, and as the introduction to
his own argumentation he cites a passage from the tradition that is on his
side in the dispute. Finally, after he has laid out his own argument for the
answer he prefers, he returns to the opening objections. Though on a few
occasions he pronounces an objection mistaken, almost always he instead
argues that what was cited as an objection need not be, and, indeed,
should not be, so interpreted. When appropriate clarications, qualications, and distinctions are made, what appeared to be an objection is seen
instead to be getting at an aspect of the full and complex truth.

Ibid., .

Stromata VI, .

Exhortation, VI.

Inquiring about God

The strategy, as I say, is clearly Clementine. Though there are indisputably errors in the textual tradition bequeathed to us, nonetheless the
bulk of that tradition presents to us a nely articulated apprehension of
the truth. And rather than dwelling on the errors, Aquinas regards his
interpretive task and challenge to be discerning that particular facet of
the truth that is presented by the text at hand, thereby showing how that
text properly interpreted ts together with other texts that might have
been supposed to contradict it. In thus interpreting the textual tradition,
Aquinas typies the medieval tradition in general; the medieval Western
tradition was dominantly Clementine in its interpretive practice.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, in our own day, has argued for recovering the
Clementine tradition though I am not aware of his anywhere calling
attention to the Clementine ancestry of the interpretive strategy that he
defends. (He does call attention to its medieval ancestry.) Confronted
with a text, the initial goal of the interpreter, so Gadamer argues, should
be to interpret so that what the text says on the subject (Sache) under discussion turns out true. Only if that goal is frustrated, only if there is no
reasonable way of interpreting the text so that it comes out true, should
we interpret for the opinion of the author on the subject under discussion.
The strategy of interpreting for authorial opinion is legitimate only as a
fall-back. Here is what Gadamer says in one passage:
Just as the recipient of a letter understands the news that it contains and rst sees
things with the eyes of the person who wrote the letter i.e., considers what he
writes as true, and is not trying to understand the writers peculiar opinions as
such so also do we understand traditionary texts on the basis of expectations
of meaning drawn from our own prior relation to the subject matter. And just
as we believe the news reported by a correspondent because he was present or is
better informed, so too are we fundamentally open to the possibility that the
writer of a transmitted text is better informed than we are, with our prior opinion. It is only when the attempt to accept what is said as true fails that we try to
understand the text, psychologically or historically, as anothers opinion.

My claim that the medievals, for the most part, practiced the Clementine
strategy of interpretation, combined with my description of Gadamer as
arguing for recovering the Clementine strategy, suggests that somewhere

Truth and Method , second revised edition, translated and edited by Joel Weinsheimer and
Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, ), .

Tertullians enduring question

along the line the Clementine strategy went into decline. And so it did.
But before we get to that, let me return to the second century to characterize Tertullians alternative strategy of interpretation.
Contrary to what one might have expected, Tertullian did not deny
that there is truth to be found in the Greek philosophers. Its denitely
a concession on his part rather than an emphasis; and he doesnt do
anything with the concession. Yet there it is. In his Apology he says, for
example:
We have already said that God fashioned this whole world by His word, His
reason, His power. Even your own philosophers agree that logos, that is, Word
and Reason, seems to be the maker of the universe. This logos Zeno denes as
the maker who formed everything according to a certain arrangement; the same
logos (he says) is called Destiny, God, the Mind of Jupiter, and the inevitable
Fate of all things. Cleanthes combines all these predicates into Spirit, which,
according to him, permeates the universe. Moreover, we, too, ascribe Spirit as its
proper substance to that Word, Reason, and Power by which, as we have said,
God made everything.

But if this is Tertullians conviction, why are disjunction and opposition the themes of his interpretive strategy? Why not, as with Clement,
supersession and incorporation?
Tertullian is less explicit on the matter than one would like.
Nonetheless, I think one can see how he was thinking. Whereas Clement
urged his readers to forget about the persons who are philosophers and
concentrate on extracting what is true from what they taught, Tertullian
had his eye on the very thing that Clement urged his readers to overlook
the particular philosophers themselves, and the distinctives of their patterns
of thought in which the particularities of their allegiances, convictions,
characters, and so forth get expressed.
When we have the full pattern of Platos thought in view or Aristotles,
or some Stoics and then compare it with the full pattern of the Rule
of Faith, what leaps out is di erence. Platos thought, in its distinctive
totality, is not a hazy and hesitant adumbration of what nally becomes
clear in the Christian Rule of Faith along with fragments of truth that
can nicely be synthesized with the Rule. Platos thought in its totality
has a contour of its own; it has its own integrity. Its not a patternless
assemblage of fragments. As such, his thought is not sub-Christian but

Apology, . Translated and edited by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Vol.
III, Latin Christianity, Its Founder, Tertullian (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans,
reprint).

Inquiring about God

anti-Christian. Be it granted that the Christian discerns that here and

there Plato is hazily and haltingly getting at something that is stated with
clarity and armed with condence in the Gospel. Be it granted that the
Christian here and there discerns fragments susceptible to being synthesized into a larger Christian philosophy. But to approach Plato thus is to
ignore the integrity of his thought. Let Plato be Plato, rather than a failed
approach to Christianity. And let Christ be Christ.
Tertullian was clearly suggesting that we cannot account for the
fact that the full pattern of Platos thought is dierent from that of the
Gospel solely by observing that the Logos dispenses its illumination more
fully in Christ than in the minds of the Greek philosophers. Perhaps it
does. But human beings are not passive recipients of shafts of illumination thrown o by Logos. In the construction of learning theres always
a self at work. What goes a long way toward accounting for the dierence between Platonic thought in its integrity or Stoic, or Aristotelian
and Christian, is that pagan selves are dierent selves from the Christian
self: dierent allegiances, dierent commitments, dierent loves, dierent orientations, dierent virtues. Further, the ways in which pagan selves
are dierent from the Christian self are not in addition to their thought;
those dierences shape their thought. Its with his eye on the dierences
of pagan selves from the Christian self that Tertullian asks:
Where is there any likeness between the Christian and the philosopher? between
the disciple of Greece and the disciple of heaven? between the man whose object
is fame and the man whose object is life? between the talker and the doer?
between the man who builds up and the man who pulls down? between friends
of error and foes of error? between one who corrupts the truth and one who
restores and teaches the truth? between truths thief and truths custodian?

Some might reply that the rst of each of these disjunctions is scarcely fair
and accurate as a description of all Greek philosophers not of Socrates,
for example. Maybe not. Nonetheless, says Tertullian, Who can know
truth without the help of God? Who can know God without Christ?
Who has ever discovered Christ without the Holy Spirit? And who has
ever received the Holy Spirit without the gift of faith? Socrates, as none
can doubt, was guided by a dierent spirit his daemon.
To most of us, the Clementine strategy of interpretation practiced by
the medievals seems very strange. And not only strange. It seems to us
that the integrity of author and text are violated when one interprets with

Apology, .

On the Soul , .

Tertullians enduring question

the aim of tting all texts together into some grand synthesis. Aristotle
was not just supplementing Plato; Nietzsche was not just complementing Pascal. Each was a unique person working out a unique pattern of
thought and expression. You and I relish the inscapes of each of those
unique patterns of thought and expression, and the dierences among
those inscapes. So much is this the case that it has become common practice in this century even to resist trying to interpret the various texts of
a single author so that they constitute a unity indeed, to resist trying to
interpret single texts of an author so that they constitute a unity. Where
once upon a time interpreters unquestioningly accepted the challenge to
show how the various Aristotelian texts t together, Werner Jaeger taught
us instead to acknowledge dissonance within the Aristotelian corpus, the
explanation oered being that Aristotles texts, written across the span of
his career, represent stages in his struggle to free himself from the intellectual grip of Plato. And where once upon a time interpreters struggled
mightily to extract a unied teaching from Kants First Critique, Norman
Kemp-Smith taught us instead to acknowledge dissonance within the
First Critique, the explanation oered being that the Critique was written
across a twenty-year stretch of time during which Kant was struggling
to break free from his earlier metaphysical way of thinking into his new
critical way of thinking.
Before the rise of deconstruction, in which Tertullianist interpretation
goes berserk, it was, however, in biblical interpretation that one saw the
Tertullianist strategy followed most relentlessly. Once upon a time the
Bible was regarded as one book, containing a unied, inexhaustibly rich
body of teaching. Then it came to be seen not as Gods one book but as
an anthology of sixty-six human books give or take a few depending
on ones preferred canon. Not long thereafter, many of the books came
in turn to be regarded as anthologies: deutero-Isaiah, trito-Isaiah, and
so forth. And then these sub-anthologies came in turn to be regarded
as anthologies of pericopes. An anthology of anthologies of anthologies,
along with the traces of fumbling editorial eorts to blend these anthologies together.
I judge the Reformation to have been the principal, though certainly not
the only, cause of the decline of Clementine, and the rise of Tertullianist,
interpretation. The Reformers no longer regarded the texts they inherited,
excepting a few unalleviatedly heretical texts, as all together embodying
a nely articulated, highly complex body of truth, it being the task and
challenge of the interpreter to extract that truth by drawing the right distinctions, making explicit the tacit qualications, properly disambiguating

Inquiring about God

the ambiguities, honoring the inherent hierarchies of decisiveness, and

so forth. To the contrary: the Reformers regarded the bulk of the texts
they inherited as riddled with error. Best then to be done with them and
return to the church fathers, and behind those, to Gods own text, the
Bible, in which there was no error at all.
But if the Reformation thus played a fundamental role in the great
reversal of interpretive strategy, I judge it was the Romantic movement
that secured the victory of the Tertullianist strategy of interpretation in
the modern world. For it was the Romantics who taught us the importance of history, the dignity of the particular, and the organic unity of
what is truly a text. Its because of our Romantic inheritance that you
and I feel in our bones that Clementine interpretation, be it practiced on
philosophical texts, biblical texts, or whatever, dishonors the authors and
texts of the past, violating their integrity, by riding roughshod over their
particularities in the concern to pluck out whatever can be incorporated
into a vast synthesis in which everything has its own little place that
synthesis being constructed, of course, by ourselves. Clementine interpretation feels to us like an act of abusive arrogance.

Revulsion is not reasoned objection, however. The question remains
open: Which goal and strategy of interpretation is right, the Clementine
or the Tertullianist? And in particular: How do you and I, as Christian
intellectuals, interpret all those texts that are not Christian? Do we
interpret them for what is true in what is said now and then polemicizing against some of the errors we notice? Or if we bother with them
at all do we interpret them for the particular contour of thought, allegiance, and sensibility there expressed? And if we do the latter, to what
end? Do we follow Clement or Tertullian? As preface to the answer I
wish to propose, let me call your attention to one fundamental point
of agreement between Clement and Tertullian. Perhaps you noticed
that whereas I spoke of the goal of interpretation for Clement as discerning what is true in what the author said, I described the goal of
interpretation that Gadamer espouses as trying to interpret the text as
saying what is true. Those are very dierent goals though the descriptions are closely similar. Clement rst interprets the text, with the aim
of discerning what the author said; then, interpretation nished, he
sorts out the true from the false with his incorporationist goal in mind.
Gadamer, by contrast, conducts interpretation itself in accord with the

Tertullians enduring question

rule of trying to have the text turn out true on the matter under consideration. In this respect, Gadamer is closer to the medievals than
the medievals were to Clement. Both Clement and Gadamer advocate
what I called the Clementine strategy of interpretation. Neither is
much interested in what Gadamer calls the particular opinions of
authors; both interpret for truth. But their ways of getting there are
very dierent; they represent dierent versions of the Clementine strategy. Clement, to say it again, rst interprets for what is said and then
looks for truth therein, Gadamer interprets so as to have it come out true
and judges that to be whats said.
On this point there is full agreement between Clement and Tertullian;
and I, in turn, agree with them. One can interpret a text with the aim in
mind of having it come out true or, be it noted, with the aim in mind of
having it come out false, or boring, or interesting, or shocking, or bland,
or disunited, or aesthetically satisfying or whatever. Instead of construing a sentence literally, on which interpretation it may be bland, one can
construe it metaphorically, on which interpretation it may be arresting;
instead of construing it ironically, on which interpretation it may express
an important truth, one can construe it literally, on which interpretation
it may express a silly falsehood. And so forth. One can do this. But to
interpret thus is to ignore the fact that texts are engagements among persons, in which one person performs an act of discourse and another tries
to discern what act that was and to respond appropriately. If one insists
on never doing anything else with texts other than use them as occasions
for engaging in ones own play of interpretation, on never using them
to engage another human being over what she said, then one is so it
seems to me in a profound way dishonoring that other human being. I
insult you if, whenever you say something to me, I subject your words to a
play of interpretation rather than attempting to discern what you said and
responding appropriately.
It may be said that one scarcely dishonors the person if one engages in
Gadamerian interpretation that is, engages in a play of interpretation
with the goal in mind of having the words come out true. Isnt this, on
the contrary, the most respectful of all modes of interpretation more
respectful than if I interpret for what you said, for your opinion, which,
after all, may or may not be true? I think not. You interpret my speech
so as to have it come out true, and you succeed in that. But the truth
that emerges is not what I said; its not what I meant, not what I had in
mind. Is that to respect me? I fail to see that it is. Its to display your own
ingenuity as interpreter.

Inquiring about God

In short, I am a rm advocate of the priority of what I call authorialdiscourse interpretation. I concede the propriety on occasion of what I
call performance interpretation that is, interpretation of a text so as
to have it come out true, or unied, or rife with aporia, or whatever. But
authorial-discourse interpretation ought to have priority, as I describe
more fully in my own Divine Discourse. To which its worth adding that
those who advocate performance interpretation regularly question interpretations of their own texts by insisting that interpreters have not grasped
what they said.
So suppose we interpret texts for what the author or editor said, rather
than so as to have them come out some way that we prefer. Should we
who are Christians, when interpreting the texts of non-Christians, interpret so as to discern, and then appropriate, whats true in what is said,
perhaps taking note along the way of errors, or should we interpret so as
to grasp the particular contour of that persons thought, then noting its
dierence from the contour of Christian thought? Should we read Plato
for whats true and to be appropriated from Plato, or for the distinct and
alien contours of his thought?
My answer is: we should do both. Neither by itself is sucient.
The rst part of my reason is that there is both truth in what Plato
thought, and a particular contour to his thought distinct from that of the
Christian Gospel. Both are there, awaiting the interpreters discovery.
The foundation of Clements practice was his insistence that truth
is not the exclusive possession of Christians not even truth about
God. Nobody is entirely blind to reality; most (maybe all) are not even
blind to the reality of God. The Christian will no doubt feel that the
non-Christians apprehension of God is for the most part decient in
one way and another, and to one degree or another. She will not not
usually, anyway nd herself learning something about God that she
didnt already know, or that she couldnt have known by reading biblical
exegesis or Christian theology. But when it comes to other matters, she
will often nd herself genuinely learning things. I am myself hesitant
to embrace Clements explanation for all of this. Perhaps some of it is
rightly ascribed to the Logos of which John speaks. But I would say that
much of it is the outcome of the workings of the nature with which
we human beings are endowed: our perceptual, rational, introspective,
memorial nature. Either way, though, we are, of course, ultimately to
ascribe truth to God.
On the other hand, Tertullian put his nger on something that
Clement consistently overlooked or neglected. Platos thought has a

Tertullians enduring question

denite contour distinctively dierent from that of the Christian Gospel,

a contour shaped not just by the way various experiences acted on various parts of his innate generic belief-forming nature, but also by the way
those experiences acted on the blend of Platos innate generic nature with
the contingent particularities of his allegiances, commitments, convictions, and so forth. Its not just our hard-wiring, but our hard-wiring plus
our programming, that accounts for what we come to believe.
It was especially Augustine, among the church fathers, who emphasized and developed this point about the ways in which our particular
contingent selves shape our learning. It led him to supplement Clements
motto, faith seeking understanding ( des quaerens intellectum), with the
more complex motto, I believe in order to understand (credo ut intelligam). Faith not only seeks understanding; it is a condition of the understanding it seeks. A full exploration of what Augustine meant by this, and
how he argued it, would require a lengthy paper by itself. Here it must
suce to say that it was Augustines conviction that our aections our
loves and hates have a profound impact on our understanding. If, for
example, one loves some part of earthly reality in an idolatrous way, that
will skew ones understanding of God and of Gods relation to humanity
and the world. It may even lead to ones denial of God. Augustine was
convinced, accordingly, that the right ordering of the aections that faith
secures is a condition of progressing in the understanding of God, and of
reality generally.
To look at the full pattern of Platos thought is to see a pattern of
thought dierent from that of the Christian Gospel, that was Tertullians
point. To focus on what is true in Platos thought is to see adumbrations
of, and supplements to, the Christian Gospel; that was Clements point.
Both were right. What should be added is that often the pieces cannot be
cleanly abstracted from the whole; what Plato meant by the piece is often
bound up with the whole, and the whole isnt true. Thats an implication of the Tertullianist point, that Platos thought is not a mere assemblage of true and false items. On the Clementine side of the matter its to
be noticed, however, that in some such cases, though what Plato said is
strictly false as he meant it, nonetheless, one can see what it was in reality
that he was trying to get at. He had his eye on something real, though he
didnt see it with full clarity or describe it with full accuracy.
That was the rst part of my argument for the conclusion that we need
both Clementine and Tertullianist interpretation: what Clement had his
eye on, and what Tertullian had his eye on, are both there. To establish
that both are there is not yet, however, to establish that both should be of

Inquiring about God

concern to the Christian scholar. Something more has to be said before

we can draw that conclusion.
At this point Clement and Tertullian were, in my judgment, each
partly right and partly wrong. Let me begin my unraveling by speaking
of the goal of Christian learning, as distinguished from the strategy.
Tertullian believed that the positive goal of Christian learning does not
extend beyond the attempt to deepen ones understanding of the Christian
Gospel. Its worth noting that just as Augustine agreed with Tertullian
that our aections and loyalties pervasively shape our learning, so too he
agreed with Tertullian on this point. Augustines mottoes, faith seeking
understanding and I believe in order to understand, are almost invariably
understood by contemporary Christians as arming the development
of sociology in Christian perspective, psychology in Christian perspective, economics in Christian perspective, and so forth. They are almost
invariably understood, in short, along Clementine lines. I think it decisively clear, however, that that is not how Augustine understood them.
For Augustine, faith seeks to understand that which already it believes a
thoroughly Tertullianist point!
Never was this Tertullianist-Augustinian conviction formulated with
greater precision and elegance than by that very Augustinian theologian
Anselm, in his Proslogion. So rather than citing Augustine, let me cite
Anselm. Before he sets out his proof for Gods existence, Anselm addresses
God with the words:
I long to understand in some degree thy truth, which my heart believes and
loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to
understand. For this also I believe that unless I believed, I should not understand. And so, Lord, do thou, who dost give understanding to faith, give me, so
far as thou knowest it to be protable, to understand that thou art as we believe;
and that thou art that which we believe.

Then, the proof nished, Anselm again addresses God: I thank thee, gracious Lord, I thank thee; because what I formerly believed by thy bounty,
I now so understand by thine illumination, that if I were unwilling to
believe that thou dost exist, I should not be able not to understand this to
be true.
To my claim that Augustine sided with Tertullian, and against
Clement, on the positive goal of Christian learning, it might be replied
that Augustine emphasizes, as Tertullian did not and Clement did, the

Proslogion, . I use the edition translated by S. L. Deane (La Salle, IL: Open Court, ).
Proslogion, .

Tertullians enduring question

utility of pagan learning for this project of faith seeking understanding.

The famous passage from On Christian Doctrine, in which Augustine
speaks of the Israelites appropriating the gold of the Egyptians, comes to
mind. But Tertullian did not deny as we have already seen that there
is truth in the pagan philosophers. More importantly, it is to be noted that
Augustine, after calling attention to the gold and silver to be found among
the pagan philosophers, concludes the passage with these words: These,
therefore, the Christian, when he separates himself in spirit from the miserable fellowship of the philosophers, ought to take away from them, and
to devote to their proper use in preaching the gospel. No hint here of
the broadscoped Christian learning that Clement favored!
I am well aware, then, of disagreeing with the greatest father of the
ancient church when I say that, on this issue, I side with Clement and
against Augustine and Tertullian. I do not believe that positive Christian
scholarship is to be conned to understanding better what already we
believe. We are allowed, and sometimes required, to seek to understand
what is no part of faith, what goes beyond faith: butteries and quarks,
plate tectonics and contemporary sculpture, epistemology and leprosy.
Before I leave my defense of Clementine interpretation, let me emphasize one point that has already become clear: disagree as they did on the
goal of positive Christian learning, Clement, Tertullian, and Augustine
agreed on a fundamental point of strategy: whatever be the segment of
reality that one is engaged in trying to understand, one consults whatever
sources might be of help. And pagan philosophy may well be among those
sources. Clement, Tertullian, and Augustine were all agreed that there is,
to use Augustines metaphor, gold and silver to be found in the pagan
philosophers. And should one nd some relevant truth in some pagan
philosopher, one does not then regret that those who are not Christian are
nonetheless in touch with reality. One gives thanks to God, the author of
all good things.
I have been speaking in defense of the goal and strategy of Clementine
interpretation, though with an important qualication. Yes, we do look
for truth in the texts of non-Christians; with this, no one disagreed,
though indeed its much more heavily emphasized by Clement than by
Tertullian, or even by Augustine. Yes, we do appropriate such truth not
just for the end of understanding better what already we believe but for
the end of understanding the reality in which we nd ourselves God

On Christian Doctrine, , . Translated by Philip Scha in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers,
Vol. II (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, ).

Inquiring about God

and Gods creation. And yes, because of the faith and love that shape our
lives, the learning that emerges will have its own distinct Christian contour. This last is the qualication. Its a Tertullianist-Augustinian point;
not a point Clement makes.
But now to defend Tertullians favored goal: Tertullians strategy,
so I have argued, was to interpret for the distinctive contour of Platos
thought, so as to take note of how dierent that is from the contour of
Christian thought. (The reader will recognize, of course, that I am here
using Plato to stand in for the totality of non-Christian thinkers.) The
question before us now is this: Why interpret thus? Why not glean from
Plato such truth as is to be found there that is useful for ones own incorporationist purposes, and then move on? Why care about the contours of
Platos thought?
A bland answer comes to mind: this too is part of the reality that the
Christian intellectual is allowed to study. To this an aesthetic observation
might be added: its interesting. And a moral observation: if the Christian
is going to engage in that practice of our common humanity which is
scholarship, then he is thereby under obligation to honor his fellow participants by understanding as well as he can how they are thinking and
where, to put it colloquially, they are coming from.
All true, I do not doubt especially the last point. Its a point I make to
my students once a week, thereabouts. Thou must not bear false witness
against other scholars, be they ancient or contemporary. Thou must not
take cheap shots. Thou must not sit in judgment until thou hast done thy
best to understand. Thou must earn thy right to disagree. Thou must conduct thyself as if Plato or Augustine, Clement, or Tertullian, were sitting
across the table the point being that it is much more dicult (I do not
say impossible) to dishonor someone to his face.
Tertullians goal was dierent from all of these, however. The dierence represented opposition for Tertullian. It was to bring opposition to
light that Tertullian thought we should interpret for the distinct contours
of pagan thought and take note of how those dier from the contours
of Christian thought. Apples are dierent from oranges; but theyre not
in opposition. Tertullian saw Platonic thought as not just dierent from
Christian thought but also in opposition. Human culture, whatever else
it may be, is a conict of religious visions and loyalties, a struggle over
God and the good, a contest for allegiance. And Tertullian believed with
all his heart that for the health and delity of the Christian community,
that struggle has to be engaged by its scholars and intellectuals. There are
a thousand and one things going on that threaten to distract and lead

Tertullians enduring question

astray those who follow Christ. Its the responsibility of the scholars and
intellectuals of the community to dig beneath the clutter so as to spy the
fundamental dynamics at work. Typically those fundamental dynamics
prove to be powerful, comprehensive systems of thought at work philosophies. I would myself add that they may instead prove to be patterns
of social organization that are only in part the application of the ideas of
intellectuals. Be that as it may, however: it is then the responsibility of the
scholars and intellectuals of the community to take the measure of those
philosophies and join combat.
This, if I understand him at all, is what Tertullian was saying. And I
agree. Culture is a struggle for allegiance. Christian learning must accordingly be Tertullianist learning. Tertullianist as well as Clementine
Clementine as well as Tertullianist.

The question that Christian scholars and intellectuals can never be nished with pondering is how to speak and act with Christian integrity
within that practice of our common humanity that is scholarship and
learning. We do not, or should not, go o into our own corner to think;
we participate in the practice of our common humanity. But we are not
under the illusion that it is possible to participate in that practice as
generic human beings; accordingly, we struggle to participate there with
Christian integrity.
If nothing else, I trust my discussion has made clear that we are not
the rst generation to have thought about this question. Our forebears
in the second century were already discussing it with a profundity both
provocative and instructive. To forget or ignore their contribution would
not only be to shortchange ourselves, but also to dishonor them.

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Index

Adams, Marilyn,
agape,
Alston, William, P., ,
diculties with his account of Aquinas on
speech about God,
his account of metaphor,
his account of ways in which terms can be
used to speak of God,
his interpretation of Aquinas on speech
about God,
on literal speech about God,
on literal use of terms,
on the res signicata/modus signicandi
distinction,
ontology he attributes to Aquinas, ,
puzzle posed by his interpretation of
Aquinas,
analytic philosophy, , ,
rejection of Kantianism,
the identity thereof,
the role of metaphysics within,
See also philosophy of religion
Anselm, , ,
argument for Gods timelessness, ,
compared with Meinong,
on faith seeking understanding,
on Gods passibility,
on the ontological argument,
response to Gaunilo: see Gaunilo
antirealism,
about God-talk,
Arendt, Hannah,
Armstrong, A. H.,
on eros,
Aristotelian ontology,
See also Aquinas, Thomas, use of constituentstyle ontology
aseity, , , , ,
See also Aquinas, Thomas, on Gods
unconditionedness; Plantinga, Alvin,
on Gods aseity

Aquinas, , ,
consequences of his ontology for speech
about God,
doctrine of analogy,
explanation for why God does not sorrow,

his approach to Greek philosophy,

liabilities of English translations of,
on divine simplicity, , ,
See also divine simplicity
on free will,
on Gods attributes, ,
on Gods knowledge,
on Gods knowledge of evil, , ,

on Gods love, ,
on Gods passions, , , , ,

as distinguished from Gods intellectual

appetite,
on Gods relation to sin, ,
on Gods relation to time, ,

on res signicata/modus signicandi

distinction, , ,
on Gods unconditionedness,
See also aseity
on Gods will,
and identication with intellectual
appetite,
distinction between antecedent and
consequent will,
on passions,
metaphorical attribution to God,
on resembling God,
on scriptural interpretation,
on sorrow,
use of constituent-style ontology,
Augustine,
his account of eudaemonia,
his account of Gods love,

Index

Augustine (cont.)
his challenge to Stoic account of emotion,

his opposition to Stoic position on the

emotions,
on emotion,
on eros, ,
on eternal life of God,
on faith seeking understanding, ,
on Gods knowledge of evil,
on grief, ,
on love,
on modes of valuing,
on sin,
on solidarity with others, , ,
on the insuciency of illumination,
on scriptural interpretation, ,
relation to eudaemonistic tradition,
tensions in his thought about love,
Aurelius, Marcus,
Austin, J. L.,
authorial-discourse interpretation,
Barr, James,
Barth, Karl,
evil,
as das Nichtige, ,
as menace, ,
as nothingness,
as resistance to grace,
essence of,
how his account diers from other
accounts,
importance of his account for Christian
philosophers,
relation of his account to the free will
account,
his account of possible beings,
problems with,
on das Nichtige, , ,
as accompaniment of creation,
as power, ,
identication with demonic powers,
is not a fallen creature,
relation to sin,
on death,
Bergmann, Gustav,
as employing a constituent-style
ontology,
Brown, Peter,
Butler, Joseph,
Cajetan,
Calvin, John, ,
Carneades,

Casteneda, Hector,
Christian scholarship,
its relation to non-Christian scholarship,
See also Clement of Alexandria; Anselm,
on faith seeking understanding;
Aquinas, Thomas, his approach to
Greek philosophy; Augustine, on faith
seeking understanding; Tertullian
Chrysippus,
conceiving,
dierent types,
Cullmann, Oscar,
Cuneo, Terence,
Clement of Alexandria,
his account of Christian scholarship,

Divine Discourse, , , , , , , , ,
,
divine ideas,
divine simplicity, , ,
compatibility with other theistic doctrines,

importance for speech about God,

relation to divine eternality,
relation to divine immutability,
See also Aquinas, Thomas, on divine
simplicity; Plotinus
doxastic merits,
Dummett, Michael,
on Frege,
emotions,
cognitive theory of,
See also William Lyons; Augustine, on
emotion
entitlement,
Epictetus,
epistemology,
of philosophy,
reformed,
eternal,
denition of,
being not identical with immutable
being,
events,
evil,
as lack of being,
coping with,
free will response to,
Baezian version of,
Molinist version of,
relation to Barths view,
Gods permission of,
Leibnizian response to,

Index
See also Kant, on evil; soul-making theodicy;
Barth, Karl, on evil; Aquinas, Thomas,
on Gods knowledge of evil; Augustine,
on Gods knowledge of evil
ourishing,
as both a species and individuals,
connection with design plan, ,

connection with proper function, ,

human,
its connection with the systems of suering
and delight,
opposite of death, ; see also Barth, Karl,
on death
foundationalism,
classical, , ,
forgiveness,
Christianitys conception of,
Frege, Gottlob,
on sense and reference,
See also Dummett, Michael
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, ,
Gaunilo,
dilemma presented to Anselm,
his interpretation of Anselms argument,

on conceiving, ,
on the knowledge/understanding (cogitare/
intelligere) distinction,
on Gods unknowability,
summary of his major objection to Anselm,

use of the perfect island analogy, ,

God,
acting through Christ,
argument that he is in time,
See also Anselm, argument for Gods
timelessness; Aquinas, Thomas, on
Gods relation to time
as benevolent, ,
as having a history,
as redeemer,
as speaker,
as unconditioned, , ; see also aseity
everlasting or eternal,
knowledge of temporal events, ,
; see also Aquinas, Thomas, on
Gods knowledge of evil; Augustine, on
Gods knowledge of evil
immutability of, ,
reasons for,
omnipotence of,

passibility of, , ; see also suering

theologians account of,
See also Anselm; Aquinas, Thomas;
aseity; Augustine; Barth, Karl; divine
simplicity
Greek philosophy,
relation to Christian philosophy, ,
, ,
See also Aquinas, Thomas, his approach to
Greek philosophy; Tertullian; Clement
of Alexandria
Habermas, Jrgen,
Hartshorne, Charles, ,
Hegel, G. W. F.,
Heidegger, Martin, ,
Helm, Paul,
Heschel, Abraham J.,
Hopkins, Jasper,
Hughes, Maldwyn,
Hume, David,
idealism,
Hegelian,
illocutionary acts, ,
Irenaeus,
John of Damascus,
on Gods impassibility,
on the passions,
Kant, , , ,
and the limits of philosophy,
a s antirealist,
as classical foundationalist,
as evidentialist, ,
denial of knowledge of God, ,
Kemp-Smiths interpretation of,
on antinomies,
on atonement,
on evil,
on faith,
on forgiveness, , , ,
on fundamental metaphysics, ,
on good will,
on guilt, , ,
on grace, ,
on happiness,
on intuition,
on moral progress, ,
on moral purity,
on morality,
and rational theology, ,
on rationally grounded religion, ,
on salvation,

Index

Kant (cont.)
on Summum Bonum, ,
strategy for interpreting scripture,
use of image of boundary, , ,
Kemp-Smith, Norman,
Kneale, William,
Kretzmann, Norman,
on divine simplicity,
on omniscience and immutability,
Lacantius,
on divine passibility,
Lament for a Son,
Lewis, David,
liturgical practices,
Locke, John, ,
and the evidentialist challenge,
his account of reason,
logical positivism, ,
Long, A. A.,
Maimonides, ,
Mann, William
on divine simplicity, ,
McCabe, Herbert, , ,
McTaggart, J. M. E.,
Meinong, Alexius,
See also Anselm, compared with Meinong
Mellor, D. H.,
metaphysical realism, ,
Moltmann, Jurgen,
Moore, G. E., ,
Morris, Thomas,
on divine simplicity,
natural theology,
natures,
medieval conception of,
ontology,
constituent v. relational,
Origen,
on Gods passibility,
Paley, William,
passions,
Stoic conception of,
See also Aquinas, Thomas, on passions;
John of Damascus
perspectival particularism,
philosophical theology, , , ,
Christian,
within the analytic tradition, ,
philosophy of religion,
role of epistemology within,

within the continental tradition,

Wittgensteinian, ,
Pike, Nelson,
Plantinga, Alvin, ,
on Gods aseity, ; see also aseity
on divine simplicity,
on the ontological argument,
Plato, ,
Plotinus, , , , , ,
account of God as unconditioned,
on divine simplicity,
pluralism,
religious,
properties,
instances,
instantiating v. exemplifying,
propositions,
not constant in truth value,
pseudo-Dionysius,
reformed epistemology,
religion,
ideal of rationally grounded,
Kant on rationally grounded,
Reid, Thomas,
On the Way of Ideas,
Ricoeur, Paul,
Rist, J. M., ,
Russell, Bertrand, , ,
Sartre, J. P., ,
Scripture, ,
as being one work,
distinction between how it presents God v.
what it claims about God,
hermeneutic principle for interpreting,
; see also Augustine, on scriptural
interpretation
presentation of God, , ,
presentation of God as having a history,
presentation of God as immutable, ,

presentation of God as in time, ,

presentation of God as outside time,
See also Aquinas, Thomas, on Gods
relation to time
presentation of God as passible, ,
presentation of God as responding,
presentation of God as silent,
presentation of Gods intentions for
humanity,
Reformers interpretation of,
Smart, J. J. C.,
Stump, Eleonore,
on divine simplicity,

Index
suering,
adverbial account of, ,
See also ourishing
aligning ourselves with Gods,
deriving joy from,
distinct from grief,
Swinburne, Richard,
temporal array,
temporal modality,
temporal-order relationships,
tense-committed sentences,
tense-indierent sentences,
Tertullian,
on heretics and philosophy,
his views on Christian learning,
theodicy,
soul-making, ; see also Ireneaus
Tillich, Paul,
time,
A-series and B-series,
and having a history,
Aquinas account of Gods relation to,
See also Aquinas, Thomas, on
Gods relation to time
nature of,

preceding relation,
relation to space,
simultaneity relation,
succession relation,
tensed theory of,
reasons for arming,
tenseless theory of, ,
tenseless date theory, ; see also Smart,
J. J. C.
token-reexive theory of,
See also Mellor, D. H.
what it is for something to be in,
whether Scripture presents God as being in,
; see also Scripture, presentation
of God as in time
time-strand,
tradition, ,
valuing,
Whitehead, Alfred,
Williams, D. C.,
Wittgenstein, Ludwig,
wronging,
Zeno,