Tyndale UC Philosophy Department writes, “Though of course many Christians are Calvinists, scarcely any Christian philosophers are.” There is currently something of a resurgence of Calvinist philosophers, and within five years I suspect we’ll see quite a bit more than we see today. There are also more working right now than a lot of people know about. But we could also add to the pile Christian philosophers who are determinists and hard determinists, but not Calvinists. There are quite a few of these, and while they’re not Calvinists they’re not libertarians either. Moreover, there was a time when the majority of Protestant philosophers were Calvinists. But it’s hard to tell what citing philosophers is meant to accomplish. If the recent PhilSurvey reports are not wide of the mark, only 13.7% of philosophers are libertarian. However, I’m not here to comment on these sociological data, interesting as they are.

You quote Leviticus and then draw two principles from it:

“Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly” (Leviticus 19:15).

LP1: It is unjust or unfair to favor A over B in context C, if your basis for doing so is C-irrelevant.

or equivalently

LP2: It is just or fair to favor A over B in context C only if your basis for doing so is C-relevant.

I wonder, does the Leviticus principle, and the subsequent LPs, hold when we substitute ‘mercy’ for ‘favor’ (where I assume the latter means ‘favoritism’ or ‘partiality’)? Or, would it hold for cases of ‘pardoning’? Are judges, governors, etc., to be considered ‘unfair’ or ‘unjust’ if they choose to pardon some but not all pardonable criminals? Moreover, interestingly enough, it’s only those passed over who are treated fairly or justly, for those God elects are not treated fairly or justly (i.e., according to what they deserve)—if they were, they’d be punished for their sins.

Another issue, I guess, is this: Irresistible grace follows from election; it’s conditionally necessary upon it. That S is elect is a ‘spiritual’ difference over S*, who is not. So we need to go back to election. It is there that we consider a single set of spiritually identical people, in that every member of this set deserves punishment. So, contrary to your suggestions, there are not two groups at this stage. On Calvinism, God treats some members of this set fairly or with justice—i.e., the reprobate—and others he doesn’t treat fairly or according to justice—i.e., those he elects—he treats them according to grace, i.e., undeserved or, better, unmerited favor (where ‘favor’ here does not mean what it means in the above Ls).

You then argue that on Calvinism, it is merely permissible that God save sinners and merely permissible that he not save sinners. Calvinists then are said to suppose that it is permissible that God save some but not others. But this principle, agglomeration, doesn’t follow in deontic logic. Where P(A) = A is permissible, it is invalid to argue: (1) P(A), (2) P(B), therefore, (3) P(A&B).

Is the permissibility thesis a necessary element of Calvinism? I don’t see why it would be. Suppose God, having created a world like this, must show mercy to some and must punish some—i.e., all his attributes must be fully or maximally displayed. As Oliver Crisp writes, “For, according to the Augustinian way of thinking, God’s nature is such that he must display his justice and mercy in his creation and it is a good thing that both of these aspects of the divine nature are displayed in the created order” (in “Is Universalism a Problem for Particularists?” Scottish Journal of Theology 63(1): 1–23 (2010)). If this is right, then you’ve got the wrong modality. While agglomeration doesn’t hold for permissibility, it seems to holds for obligations (O) or necessities (N):

O(A)

O(B)

:. O(A&B)

Or

N(A)

N(B)

:. N(A&B)

If either one of these were the relevant modality, the fallacious argument you’ve saddled the Calvinist with would fail, resting, as it does, on (3) instead of a (3*) that could, mutatis mutandis, be derived from the above.

Now, it seems intuitive to me that L1 and L2 don’t hold for mercy (and I’m not sure about L1 and L2 themselves, as they weren’t argued for but, at best, motivated inductively; but I’ll let issues with L1 and L2 sit for now). All I’d need is one case to provide a counterexample, and I’ve given one that seems plausible (another might be Hosea’s marriage to Gomer), especially when we consider that those left are treated fairly and justly. But to put a finer point on it, one principle might be put thus:

M_weak: It is not unjust or unfair for S to show mercy to A over B (or vice versa) when both A and B justly deserve D, and S has the right to show mercy to either A or B (which could be both) or neither.

The stronger, ‘Crispy’ principle would be

M_strong: It is not unjust or unfair for S to show mercy to A over B (or vice versa) when both A and B justly deserve D, and S has the duty (in some suitable sense) to show mercy to either A or B but not both, and S has the duty (in some sense) to serve D to either A or B but not both.

If either of these are the relevant principle, rather than the Ls, the above argument wouldn’t go through as stands.

But here’s one point that would remain: Does S select A over B (or vice versa) arbitrarily? No. All we need is some relevant reason S selects A over B (or vice versa). In the case of Calvinism, that set of relevant reasons is pretty large. Now, ‘spiritual’ is left vague in your blog post. So I’m not sure the content of ‘spiritual’. But on Calvinism, “unconditional election” simply states that the basis for choosing some sinner can’t be the biblically revealed conditions of salvation, i.e., faith, repentance, meritorious good works, or anything in the creature that would necessitate God choosing him over another. But there’s still a remainder of reasons—these even may be ‘spiritual’, unless ‘spiritual’ just means exactly those things I listed from the Westminster Confession of Faith, which seems question-begging and somewhat ad hoc if it does mean just those reasons. So I maintain that a relevant reason exists. This is a metaphysical point that saying “I can’t see what it is” can’t rebut: to think so confuses epistemology with metaphysics. This argument would also work for mere permissibilists, i.e., those who accept M_weak.

Another objection might be: If God had to, in some sense, show mercy to some and punish others, this would (a) vitiate against divine freedom and (b) remove the graciousness of grace. I don’t think (a) is true, and many libertarians admit there are some things God must do, especially if the necessity obtains contingently, upon a prior contingent choice. I don’t think (b) is true either. Here are two reasons: (i) The grace would still obtain for individuals, since it’s indeterminate as to which ones will receive grace; and (ii) something like this holds on Arminianism too.

There are two reasons that support the second of these (i.e., that something similar holds on Arminianism): (1) Given the content packed into ‘love’ on Arminian schemes, it would seem unloving for God not to attempt to save anyone when he could, but given depravity, he’d have to provide grace to achieve this. (2) If the human race was unable to do any good action sans prevenient grace but they were still liable to punishment for their sins, then “ought implies can” would seem to be false, and (most) libertarians claim it can’t be false and that it would be unjust for God to punish people who could not do good. So again, on Arminianism, God had to provide prevenient grace to all in order to punish any.

1. I think Bill may have misunderstood the purpose and target of my post. I agree with him that in a debate one shouldn’t invoke premises which one’s opponent doesn’t accept. But in that post I wasn’t offering an argument against SSM, still less an argument that might be persuasive to non-Christians. Rather, I was addressing fellow Christians and making the point that some responses to SSM proposals give away the store by conceding that marriage could in principle be redefined by us.

2. Bill suggests, following his Fox News namesake O’Reilly, that appealing to the idea that marriage is a divine institution would amount to “Bible-thumping”. I don’t think appeals to the Bible are out of place in the public square, even when directed at unbelievers, but I won’t argue the point here. (Such appeals may not have argumentative traction, but rational persuasion isn’t the only respectable kind of persuasion.)

Instead I’ll observe that one could argue for the divine institution of marriage on the basis of natural theology and natural law. If there is a Creator who intended for humans to exist, and to exist as males and females in procreative relationships, then natural law arguments for marriage lead naturally (!) to the conclusion that marriage is a divine institution. If God is the author of human nature, and human marriage is grounded in human nature, God must also be the author of human marriage; in which case, we’re in no position to change it.

3. I agree that the question of whether marriage has a nature is distinct from the question of whether marriage is divinely ordained. Still, it’s hard to see how marriage could have much of a nature apart from divine ordination. Suppose marriage is neither a divine institution nor a human institution (i.e., a social convention or construction). By who or what would it be defined? Bill offers an argument to the effect that marriage is grounded in human nature and human procreative powers. But armadillos have procreative powers too. So why don’t armadillos have marriage?

Marriage has to be grounded in something more than procreative powers and opposite-sex unions. (Bill seems to grant this when he says that “there are social and cultural factors in addition to this natural substratum.”) And if that “something more” isn’t divinely ordained, it’s hard not to conclude that it arises out of human social conventions.

But perhaps Bill’s point is that this “natural substratum” is a necessary component of marriage; thus, while we might be able to change some aspects of marriage, we cannot change it in such a way as to eliminate its grounding in opposite-sex procreative unions. I think this is a good argument. However, it still depends on the notion of a biological human nature, and I’m persuaded (though again, I won’t argue the point here) that Darwinian naturalism is incompatible with biological essentialism. So it seems we’re still driven toward a theistic grounding for marriage.

4. Finally, I agree with Bill that advocates of SSM don’t have to adopt anti-realism — but it helps enormously. My observation, for what it’s worth, is that the cutting edge of the LGBT movement is closely allied with postmodernist anti-essentialism and social constructivism. (If you don’t believe me, just do some research on “queer theory”.) So the connection I’m making is a sociological one rather than a logical one.

What is the most important question of all?

On the face of it, that question seems like a sensible one, even an important one. We ask many questions in life, and some are clearly more important than others. For example, the question “Where are my car keys?” is more important than the question “How many ducks are there in Belgium right now?” It’s possible, in principle, to rank questions in order of importance.

So what’s the most important question of all? A number of candidates immediately spring to mind:

• “Does God exist?”
• “What is God like?”
• “What is the purpose of life?”
• “What does it mean to be human?”
• “Is there life after death?”
• “Do we have free will?”
• “How can I find true happiness?”

And of course we could suggest other candidates. But here’s the funny thing. We’re reflecting on all those different questions right now because we first asked the question “What is the most important question of all?” In fact, it seems to me that when we raise those questions we do so precisely because we consider them to be among the most important questions to ask. In other words, we raise those other questions because we’ve already raised, at least implicitly, that first question.

Or look at it this way. All of the questions listed above are important, as are many others. But they’re also challenging questions. It might take time and effort to answer any one of them. So we would like to know where to begin. To which of those questions should we devote ourselves first? Well, to the most important one, of course. But in order to do that, we first need to answer the question “Which is the most important question of all?”

So it seems that the question “What is the most important question of all?” is prior to all the other important questions. It’s more fundamental than those other questions, which suggests that it’s more important that all those other (important) questions.

According to this line of reasoning, then, the answer to the question “What is the most important question of all?” is simply:

What is the most important question of all?

But that’s disturbingly paradoxical, isn’t it? For it suggests that the most important question of all has an answer that is (1) remarkably easy to deduce and (2) utterly uninformative and unhelpful.

Nevertheless, it still sounds pretty impressive to say that you’ve answered the most important question of all — and that’s exactly what I’ve just done. Aren’t you impressed?

Now, on to the second most important question of all…

Recently, I have been reading about God and abstract objects and came across your article in Phil-Christi with Greg Welty regarding God and logic. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it both persuasive and useful. In doing further reading on your website I came across a follow up article where you argue that atheism presupposes theism (and so does every other ism) and your argument gets close to an objection to the claim that logic depends on God that I have long wondered about. In the article, in reference to Atheism you argue the following:

(1) God does not exist. [assumption for reductio]
(2) It is true that God does not exist. [from (1)]
(3) There is at least one truth (namely, the truth that there is no God). [from (2)]
(4) If there are truths, they are divine thoughts.
(5) There is at least one divine thought. [from (3) and (4)]
(6) If there are divine thoughts, then God exists.
(7) Therefore, God exists. [from (5) and (6)]

Consider the following reconstruction:

(1*) God does not exist. [assumption for reductio]
(2*) It is true that God does not exist. [from (1*)]
(3*) There is at least one truth (namely, the truth that there is no God). [from (2*)]
(4*) Therefore, truth does not depend on God. [from (1*) and (3*)]

Let me make explicit why I think (1*-4*):

(5*) The laws of logic are divine thoughts.
(6*) According to the aseity-sovereignty doctrine if God did not exist then nothing would exist.
(7*) If God did not exist there would be no divine thoughts.
(8*) Therefore, there would be no laws of logic.

But if (5*-8*) hold, the proposition either God exists or He does not, would be a truthful description of that state of affairs and be an instance of the LEM. Likewise, the proposition God exists, would be false, not true. Not both true and false, thus an instance of the LNC.

Or another way of stating it would be:

If God did not exist then nothing would exist. But it seems that even if God did not exist there would be at least one thing that would exist, the state of affairs, nothing exists. Doesn’t that imply/entail that there is at least one truth about that state of affairs, the truth nothing exists? If that is the case don’t we have laws of logic?

I assume my objection is misguided in some way. If you have time to address this question and clarify my error I would appreciate it.

I think there are a few problems with the way the objection has been posed. For example, surely it’s incoherent to claim that if nothing were to exist, at least one thing would exist: the state of affairs, nothing exists. (What we have here, in effect, is a reductio ad absurdum of the claim that possibly nothing exists. A more rigorous argument, courtesy of the Maverick Philosopher, can be found here.) Moreover, I wouldn’t consider the proposition either God exists or He does not to be a description of a state of affairs, but rather a necessary logical truth.

Quibbles aside, however, the thrust of the objection is clear enough. I would restate it this way:

(1) If God did not exist, there would be at least one truth: the truth that God does not exist.
(2) If there are truths, there are instances of the laws of logic.
(3) If there are instances of the laws of logic, there are laws of logic.
(4) Therefore, if God did not exist, there would be laws of logic. [from (1), (2), and (3)]
(5) Therefore, the laws of logic can exist independently of God. [from (4)]
(6) Therefore, the laws of logic are not divine thoughts. [from (5)]

Assuming that this is a fair restatement of the objection, where does it go wrong? I think the inferences from (4) to (5) and from (5) to (6) are valid. I suppose premises (2) and (3) could be challenged, but I’m happy to grant them for the sake of argument. The real problem lies with (1) insofar as it begs the question against my position. Greg Welty and I gave a lengthy argument for the claim that propositions are divine thoughts. If our argument is sound then the following is true:

(1′) If God did not exist, there would be no truths.

Clearly (1) and (1′) cannot both be true; if (1) is true then (1′) is false. Hence any objection that relies on (1) actually assumes what it needs to prove, namely, that our argument is unsound.

I suppose one might reply that (1) is self-evidently true, or at least follows from a self-evident truth. Consider this generalization:

(*) If X did not exist, there would be at least one truth: the truth that X does not exist.

Isn’t this a self-evident principle? At first glance, one might think so. But then (1) follows trivially as an instance of (*).

However, this is too hasty, because the following is also an instance of (*):

(7) If truths did not exist, there would be at least one truth: the truth that truths do not exist.

Surely (7) is incoherent and therefore necessarily false. (This suggests, of course, an argument for the necessary existence of truths.) At any rate, we have good reason to think that (*) cannot be wielded in support of (1).

The fact is that (1) isn’t a trivial or obvious truth at all. It’s a counterpossible conditional (assuming that God exists necessarily if God exists at all) and there’s serious philosophical debate over how to interpret and evaluate such claims. (Compare the following claim: If 3 were equal to 2, 9 would be an even number. Is that claim true or false? Hard to say!) At a minimum, whether or not you think (1) is true will depend, in part, on what you already believe about the relationship between God and propositions (and likewise for the relationship between God and logic).

All this to say, it seems to me that objections like the one expressed above beg the question against the argument for God from logic, since they rely on counterpossible conditionals which tacitly presuppose that propositions are metaphysically independent of God.

Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, has was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. (Acts 17:1-4)

When they had appointed a day for him, they came to him at his lodging in greater numbers. From morning till evening he expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets. And some were convinced by what he said, but others disbelieved. (Acts 28:23-24)

Preaching instead of apologetics? No. Preaching with apologetics.

If Silver can perfect his model, it opens up some exciting possibilities for future elections. For one, it will obviate the need for people to actually go to the polls and vote. Silver will simply run his stats and tell us how Americans would have voted had they gone to the polls. Just think of all the time and money this will save!

As I see it, there’s a very simple explanation why the Republicans lost. Broadly speaking, the Republican Party represents conservatism (both socially and economically) and the Democratic Party represents liberalism. (If you don’t agree with this generalization, you might as well stop reading now.) Looking at the big picture of all the ballots held yesterday, not just the presidential election, it’s clear that America as a nation opted for moral relativism over economic realism. Over the last month I’ve closely followed the Twitter feeds of the Obama team and the Romney team, which gave a good indication of their core strategy to win over uncommitted voters. The Romney campaign (and Republicans in general) bet heavily on economic conservatism, and they lost. The Obama campaign (and Democrats in general) bet heavily on social liberalism, and they won. That pretty much tells you all you need to know.

The fact is that over the last half-century the center of gravity of American culture has been driven in a socially liberal direction under the combined influence of Hollywood, the mainstream media, public education, social media with its celebrity worship, and world opinion. America can no longer be honestly described as a conservative nation. The culture took a nose-dive well before the economy did.

This suggests that, broadly speaking, there are only two scenarios under which Republicans could expect to regain power. The first is for them to follow the lead of the European center-right parties (e.g., the UK’s Conservative Party) and to embrace social liberalism. The other is for a major spiritual revival to take place in the United States that would, among other things, fundamentally realign its cultural priorities. Needless to say, I favor the latter; but clearly it’s a scenario that no human organization — certainly not the GOP — could possibly engineer. The only way to hasten spiritual revival is through heartfelt repentance and fervent Spirit-dependent prayer. Indeed, if Christians in America haven’t already been praying fervently for revival in this land, regardless of political events, we deserve what happened yesterday — and more besides.

Some of my Christian readers may find this analysis naive and simplistic (and I can only imagine what non-Christian readers will make of it!). But I just call ‘em as I see ‘em.

Addendum: I see that my colleague Mike Kruger has posted his own thoughts on the election, which, I’m pleased to note, reflect the same basic perspective on events.

On a closely related note, check out these good thoughts by my colleague Mike Kruger on the current state of public debate over moral issues.

• In an article co-authored with Greg Welty I argued that if there are laws of logic then there must be a God. A key part of the argument is to explain why propositions should be understood as divine thoughts.
• In a comment on a subsequent post Jeff asked how I would respond to the claim that God doesn’t think propositionally.
• In a comment on my answer Jeff cited (without necessarily endorsing) some remarks to the contrary by Nate Shannon and William Lane Craig. Another commenter, Ray, also mentioned some relevant footnotes in Scott Oliphint’s God With Us.

In this week’s exciting episode, I examine the arguments of Shannon, Oliphint, and Craig. Do they show that God doesn’t think propositionally or that propositions couldn’t be divine thoughts? Does the doctrine of divine simplicity rule out Theistic Conceptual Realism? Should anyone care either way? We’ll be right back with some answers after the following short section break!

Nate Shannon

As quoted by Jeff, Nate Shannon commented:

As Oliphint points out, it helps to make a distinction (as Turretin does) between the mode and the object of God’s knowledge. As for mode, it is generally denied that God knows propositions or knows propositionally, as it is denied that God knows discursively, or knows one thing by knowing another.

There may be two distinct arguments here or one argument stated in two ways, depending on whether or not the last clause is epexegetical. Let’s treat them as distinct arguments just in case:

(1a) If God knows propositionally, God knows discursively.
(2a) God doesn’t know discursively.
(3a) Therefore, God doesn’t know propositionally.

(1b) If God knows propositionally, God knows one thing by knowing another.
(2b) God doesn’t know one thing by knowing another.
(3b) Therefore, God doesn’t know propositionally.

The problem with both arguments is that there’s no good reason to accept the first premise of either, at least if “know propositionally” is understood in the minimalist sense I endorsed earlier.

To know discursively, I take it, is to know one truth in virtue of knowing another truth (e.g., I know that it rained last night in virtue of knowing that the driveway is wet). But surely God could know propositionally without knowing discursively: he could know all truths immediately, without any kind of inference or logical progression.

Similar considerations apply to the second argument. The claim that God thinks propositionally is entirely consistent, as far as I can see, with the idea that God knows everything immediately; indeed, it is even consistent in principle with the claim (which Shannon apparently wants to endorse) that God knows everything immediately by knowing himself immediately.

Shannon continues:

He knows as he is, which is infinite, eternal, simple, and a se. So I don’t think there is any reason to try to put any propositions at all into the mind of God.

This is a rather unhelpful and misleading way to state what Welty and I have argued. We haven’t tried to “put propositions into the mind of God” as though propositions were objects of thought distinct from God. Rather, we’ve argued that propositions just are divine thoughts. They’ve always been in the mind of God, eternally and necessarily!

I said in my response something about God thinking logical laws intransitively; what I was thinking was that the most charitable way to construe AW’s thesis that God thinks the laws of logic would be to remove eliminate the subject-object structure of it, or the form-content structure (they say that the Ls of L are God’s thoughts ‘about’ his own thoughts) and suppose this: God thinks himself; God, himself, is self-consistent and without internal contradiction; therefore God thinks ‘self-consistency’ and ‘noncontradiction’. But even that is just bad theology, if not idolatrous: the triune personal God thinks the triune personal God. Anyway so the mode of God’s knowledge precludes our saying that God knows propositions.

The argument here is less than clear, and quite confused at points, but lurking behind it all are two serious theological concerns: divine aseity and divine simplicity. Shannon’s worry, I take it, is that the position Welty and I defended in our paper is at odds with these two doctrines. So let’s take a closer look.

According to the doctrine of divine aseity (DDA) God is absolutely self-existent, self-contained, and self-sufficient. God does not depend in any way on anything external to himself or distinct from himself. Is the claim that God thinks propositionally at odds with DDA? Not in any obvious way. We have argued that propositions are divine thoughts. So insofar as God ‘depends’ on propositions, he doesn’t ‘depend’ on anything other than his own thoughts. In any case, I said earlier that the claim that God thinks propositionally need be understood only as the claim that God thinks in terms of truths and falsehoods. Does that conflict with DDA? Only if one thinks that truths and falsehoods are external to God or distinct from God. But that isn’t entailed by our argument.

Some might contend that DDA entails the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) and it’s really the latter that conflicts with our position. So let’s turn our attention now to DDS.

Two things need to be recognized about DDS at the outset: first, it is a venerable but very difficult doctrine; and second, there are various interpretations of the doctrine, some stronger than others, some more plausible and defensible than others. So Shannon needs to be clear about which version of DDS he is taking for granted and why.

If the objection here is that talk of “God’s thoughts” is problematic because it implies diversity within God, then I have two comments in response. First, the Bible speaks directly about God’s “thoughts” (e.g., Isa. 55:8-9) but it doesn’t speak directly about divine simplicity (even if DDS turns out to be a reasonable inference from other biblical teachings). So anyone who claims to accept the Bible but denies that God has thoughts has some explaining to do.

Second, those of us committed to the doctrine of the Trinity have to affirm some real ontological diversity within God. If your favored version of DDS entails that there is no such diversity then so much the worse for that version of DDS.

James Dolezal’s God Without Parts is one of the most impressive and trenchant defenses of DDS to appear in recent years, yet even Dolezal concedes that there are some unresolved difficulties with DDS which raise concerns about its coherence. (See my review in Themelios.) So one ought to be rather cautious and circumspect about using DDS as a stick to beat someone else’s argument.

Nevertheless, it’s worth trying to dig a bit deeper. Does DDS really rule out God thinking propositionally? If propositions are conceived of as external to God and distinct from God then yes, it does. But as I explained, the claim that God thinks propositionally doesn’t have to be understood along those lines.

What if propositions are really divine thoughts, as we’ve argued? The baseline understanding of divine simplicity is that God has no parts. But why think that God’s thoughts would have to be parts of God? A stronger interpretation of divine simplicity is that there is no ontological composition of any kind in God and no ontological distinction between God and his attributes or properties. Thus construed the objection is that DDS precludes (i) any diversity of thoughts ‘within’ God’s mind and (ii) any ultimate distinction between God and his thought(s).

Certainly this is a challenge. Still, it seems to me that any resources that the defender of DDS might deploy to explain how DDS can be reconciled with the (indispensable) notion of divine attributes could be redeployed to explain how DDS can be reconciled with the (equally indispensable, in my view) notion of divine thoughts. “It’s acceptable to speak about God’s attributes,” the defender of DDS will say, “so long as we understand that ultimately each of God’s attributes is identical to God.” In that case, why can’t we say that it’s also acceptable to speak about God’s thoughts, so long as we understand that ultimately each of God’s thoughts is identical to God? If the champion of DDS can accommodate a meaningful distinction between God’s omniscience and God’s omnipotence, there’s no reason to think he can’t also accommodate a meaningful distinction between God’s thought that he is omniscient and God’s thought that he is omnipotent.

Dolezal, for example, favors the “Truthmaker Account” of divine attributes, according to which God himself (and God alone) is the “truthmaker” for true predications such as “God is omnipotent” and “God is omniscient”. On this account God himself plays the role, so to speak, of the divine ‘attributes’. If this account is defensible, why couldn’t a similar account be defended with respect to divine thoughts? Why not say that God himself plays the role of the divine ‘thoughts’? In that case God would also be the “truthmaker” for true predications such as “God thinks that he is omniscient” and “God thinks that he is omnipotent”.

One might complain that this raises difficulties with respect to contingently true propositions. Indeed it does — but the problem of logical contingency is one that afflicts DDS across the board (see, e.g., Dolezal, chapter 7). In other words, the source of those difficulties is DDS itself rather than the idea of divine thoughts. My only point here is that if the notion of divine attributes can be reconciled with DDS, there’s good reason to think that the notion of divine thoughts can also be reconciled with it.

Nevertheless, one might worry that identifying propositions with divine thoughts breaches the Creator-creation distinction. Do we really want to say that God himself is the propositional content of all our human thoughts? Doesn’t that in some sense bring God “down to our level”? If that’s the concern, I think there’s a relatively straightforward solution to it. We can say that one part of the creation is a diverse realm of mediating truth-bearing entities. These entities (1) exist contingently (since they are part of the creation), (2) are not identical to God or to one another, (3) are a finite, analogical representation of God’s thoughts, and (4) serve as proximate, mediating truth-bearers for human thought and language. Call these entities “propositions” if you wish, so long as you recognize that they can’t be the ultimate bearers of truth, because the latter (as we argue in our paper) must be mental in nature and exist necessarily. As far as I can see, the scenario I’ve just sketched is entirely consistent with Theistic Conceptual Realism.

Scott Oliphint

As his comments indicate, Shannon is really channeling Scott Oliphint, so let’s turn now to the source. We can be briefer here, given what has been said already. I quote from a footnote in Oliphint’s God With Us (Crossway, 2012):

The question of whether God has beliefs cannot be discussed here in any detail. Suffice it to say that there seems to be no reason to assume that he does, especially since the holding of beliefs would entail some kind of noetic lack or privation. The view that God has beliefs seems to be an erroneous corollary of the view that God knows by way of propositions. This was of thinking has historically been denied in Christianity, since to know by way of propositions is to know by way of a process of reasoning. (p. 94, fn. 12)

I’ve already pointed out that knowing propositionally understood in a minimalist sense — knowing in terms of truths and falsehoods — doesn’t entail knowing “by way of a process of reasoning.” God could know propositionally yet immediately and intuitively (and even simply!). So here we find no objection to the claim that God thinks propositionally or that propositions are divine thoughts.

In the remainder of the footnote Oliphint quotes from Benedict Pictet (via Richard Muller) in support of the same point:

Concerning the manner (modus) in which God knows all things, we must speak cautiously and not attribute anything unbecoming or unworthy to the ultimate majesty. . . . Now we must not at all imagine that God knows things in the same manner as men, who understand one thing in one way, and another thing in another way, and the same thing sometimes obscurely and at other times more clearly, and who, from all things known proceed to things unknown. The divine knowledge is of such a mode, as not to admit of any discursive imperfection, or investigative labor, or recollective obscurity, or difficulty of application. God comprehends all things by one single act, observes them as by a single consideration, and see them distinctly, certainly, and therefore perfectly.

I couldn’t agree more. But none of this, as best I can tell, is inconsistent with the claim that God knows propositionally in the sense I defined. Certainly God doesn’t know things in the manner that we know them — that’s a given. God knows perfectly, immediately, intuitively, exhaustively, and simply. But we cannot deny that in some meaningful sense God has thoughts and those thoughts have propositional content. Otherwise we fall into the pit of pure apophaticism. We must reject univocity, certainly, but we must also reject pure equivocity.

Oliphint adds the following in a subsequent footnote:

There are actually two aspects of God’s knowledge that are traditionally emphasized — the mode and the object. I will mention something of the mode below, but it should be said here that God “knows all things intuitively and noetically, not discursively and dianoetically (by ratiocination and by inferring one things from another)” (Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology [...]). In other words, God does not know by way of discursive reasoning, nor are the objects of his knowledge propositions. (p. 95, fn. 14)

Once again, I see nothing here that necessarily conflicts with my position. Knowing propositionally doesn’t entail knowing discursively or inferentially, nor does it entail that propositions are diverse objects of knowledge distinct from God (which I presume is the real worry here). If propositions are divine thoughts, and divine thoughts aren’t ultimately distinct from God, then Turretin’s (and Oliphint’s) concerns are satisfied.

William Lane Craig

Jeff also offered the following from William Lane Craig:

Some thinkers such as William Alston, while rejecting complete [divine] simplicity, have advocated that God’s knowledge be construed as simple. On Alston’s view God has a simple intuition of all of reality, which we human cognizers represent to ourselves propositionally. Such a view is in line with Aquinas’s adaptation of the Augustinian notion of the Divine Ideas. In order to preserve divine aseity in the face of Platonism, Augustine located the Platonic forms in God’s mind as the Divine Ideas. Aquinas went further by contending that God does not, strictly speaking, have a plurality of Divine Ideas but rather an undifferentiated knowledge of truth. We finite knowers break up God’s undivided intuition into separate ideas. Similarly, Alston maintains that God’s knowledge is strictly non-propositional, though we represent it to ourselves as knowledge of distinct propositions. Thus, we say, for example, that God knows that Mars has two moons, and He does indeed, know that, but the representation of His knowing this proposition is a merely human way of stating what God knows in a non-propositional manner. Such a conception of divine knowledge has the advantage that it enables us to embrace conceptualism without committing us to an actual infinite of divine cognitions or Divine Ideas. (source)

A full response would requiring delving into Alston’s fascinating essay, but that will have to wait for another time. For now, just three comments:

1. Craig’s concerns are very different than Shannon and Oliphint’s. Craig isn’t worried about reconciling divine thoughts with DDS because he doesn’t hold to DDS. (In fact, he thinks that God is composed of at least three parts: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.) Rather, Craig is concerned about whether there is an infinite number of divine thoughts, because that would pose a problem for his defense of the kalam cosmological argument. (More precisely, it would pose a problem for one philosophical argument he offers in support of one premise of the kalam argument.) Craig doesn’t object to there being a plurality of divine thoughts — only to an infinite plurality of them!

2. When Alston maintains that God’s knowledge is non-propositional, he appears to take for granted that propositions are complex, diverse, and distinct from God — in short, that they are Platonic or quasi-Platonic structured abstract entities. But as I’ve argued, neither the claim that God thinks propositionally nor the claim that propositions are divine thoughts requires us to construe propositions in that way. In fact, the scenario Alston describes as “God knowing in a non-propositional manner” basically amounts to a combination of Theistic Conceptual Realism and some version of DDS. Since I affirm both TCR and DDS, Alston’s view can hardly be regarded as a challenge to mine.

3. As I suggested above, if we want to insist that the propositional objects of our thoughts are complex and diverse, TCR can accommodate that by positing a mediating realm of created truth-bearing abstract entities. That may not be the most parsimonious hypothesis, but ontological economy isn’t the only desideratum in play here.

In conclusion, then, I’ve yet to encounter any good theological objection to the claim that God thinks propositionally (understood in a minimalist sense) or that propositions could be divine thoughts.