The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Is everything a reflection of God - the first Cause?

Haven’t posted here in a while, but wanted to chime in here.

Free agency seems to me to be only compatibilism with a different name. How does it account for the existence of our seemingly brute “natures”? They either come straight from God as they are (which would make him responsible for any evil they contained) or there is some other truly independent causative power (i.e. our free wills) which have messed things up.

By they way, I would like to express again my concerns with the whole “Boethian” timeless view of God. By itself (as presented by Jason), I find the doctrine incoherent. For there must be some logical priority, even if we view time as a single “now”, among the acts of the free creatures throughout the space-time continuum. And if this is so, God cannot be interacting “simultaneously” with all those acts in such a way that violates that logical priority. The easiest way to see this error is this way. When Jesus foretells that Peter will deny him, it is asserted (on Boethius view) that he is able to foretell this, not because God has predetermined Peter’s acts, but simply because he “sees” them in his eternal now. However, the Peter that God would be seeing who is denying Christ would himself be a being who had already experienced the foretelling prophecy. In other words, before Peter is told the prophecy, he must deny Christ, but before he denies Christ, he has to have heard the prophecy. What is given with one hand on this theory is at the same time taken away with the other. The reply at this point is often - by Lewis and Boethius - that all God’s “acts” in eternity with his creation are really a single act, “incorporating” everything at once. But, even if this were so, this single act would have to uphold this logical interaction, for the temporally posterior acts of free creatures are dependent on temporally prior acts, not vice versa, and therefore what is temporally prior, even with time removed from the equation, is also logically prior. Thus, acts which occur earlier in time must be logically before acts which come later in time, and the latter are “dependent” on the former; not vice versa.

I do think there is a better view of divine atemporality, free will, and providence, which actually incorporates this Boethian view of Lewis’ with his more “open theistic” beliefs, in terms of God “risking” when he created beings with free will, the “two way traffic” of causation between God and creature and God’s impassibility (or lack thereof), and, perhaps the most enlightening metaphor he’s given us on the subject, his chess piece analogy at the end of the Great Divorce. For those interested I’ll post a short summary of that theory below from something I’ve written in the past.

"By combining various elements of CS Lewis’ views of God’s relationship to time, free will, foreknowledge and impassibility, I think I have something pretty close to a “Lewisian” response to the grounding objection in Molinism.

I have attached a diagram which explains it best, but, to put it in words, God’s knowledge is determined by the part of us which is eternal and not in time (which I labeled “soul”). There is a logical priority here which is, admittedly, only vaguely imaginable - like the eternal footprint in the sand - but I think the image does convey a positive idea. Once this “non-temporal” interaction - this “imprintation” - occurs, God’s knowledge is “affected”. This is possible only by the power of his omnipotence and act of self-abnegation which allows us creatures to be “more than receptacles”. I’m sure you know that any theory of genuine free will must allow for God in some way to be affected by his creation; I simply say that affect-ing must occur outside of and logically before time. Once this knowledge is “obtained” by God (this would be where he “learns” the counterfactuals of freedom), God can then “reveal” the soul (to him and to itself), in time, by giving it consciousness, etc, and perfecting it in whatever way he sees fit. His seeing its eternal nature, which has somehow “responded” to him outside of time, allows him to know how it would respond, were he to put it in time A under influences B. What God gains in eternity by looking at the soul is something that allows him to know how such a soul would look “unraveled”, as it were, in time. Perhaps the pictorial best explains it, however.

This idea is based off Lewis in the Great Divorce and his chess piece analogy. You will notice there that he has an “eternal nature” standing outside the board (which is time), and the board itself is that nature “dileneated” in time. This idea, combined with what he says in Letters to Malcolm about there being a “two-way traffic” of causation between creator and created presents the possibility of our eternal souls “causing” God’s knowledge of free counterfactuals outside of time and “before” we have been put in time. Finally, we “come to know ourselves” in time, as our consciousness of our own choices comes to us moment by moment (Screwtape.) As he indicates in the Great Divorce, our eternal souls can be viewed as making a sort of “single” choice or giving a “single” expression by eternally exercising our freedom in a certain way. This expression can be “broken up” in time.

I’m not convinced Lewis actually pictured or encountered the grounding objection, but synthesizing his views allows us to see a possible solution.

Thomas Flint called this view a kind of combination of open theism in eternity and determinism in time. That is a helpful way of thinking, I believe, so long as one remembers it doesn’t exactly capture it."


Nice to have your view Chris :slight_smile: I found it very interesting.

From what I understand, it’s very similar to my current view, but with the introduction of ‘open theism’ within eternity (which God then responds to in his eternal determinism, which then plays out in time). My current view does not have this self-determining aspect to the soul - the diversity and characteristics that exist which God responds to, are themselves determined by God (meaning, yes God is responsible in a certain sense for sin within us). The introduction of this eternal limited self-determining ‘open theism’, which influences but by no means negates God’s determinism, can fit quite well with Scripture and universalism. I’ll have to think about it a bit more. My initial gut instinct (obviously a very reliable guide LOL) is that Scripture and logical coherence favour absolute determinism more than this hybrid… But I’m intrigued.

Interesting critique of Boethian timelessness from a pure foreknowledge perspective. I’m not sure its enough to totally discredit it, but I’d like to hear a defence of the idea’s coherence in the face of this challenge. Any form of determinism (with or without eternal self-determinism) easily solves the problem - because it naturally assumes that God has a logical progression that He then expresses in temporal consciousness. God doesn’t have a bunch of space-time slices that mash into an unintelligible shape, but rather arrange themselves to form a beautiful 4D image. The arrangement (logical / temporal progression) is an essential part of God’s determinism.

I think the concept of God’s ‘responsibility’ for evil, is an important thing to grapple with. Why is it that Christians feel they have to get God off the hook for being intimately involved in creating what we call ‘evil’? I have yet to hear a reason that sticks under scrutiny. Would be keen to hear your thoughts.

Is God on the hook? I have yet to hear a reason to think so, that sticks under scrutiny. :wink:
If He is on the hook, responsible for evil, then I can think of a greater God.
That is, if we are using the words ‘responsible’ and ‘evil’ and ‘greater’ and ‘God’ univocally.

The weakest rebuttal to the statement that “I do not believe that God is responsible for evil” would be: “I cannot think of any way in which He CANNOT be responsible for Evil”. As if our inability to think a thing binds God. Of course, that cuts both ways, which I think shows the paucity of our philosophy rather than saying something meaningful about God.

As has been said somewhere, or should have been : we put Descartes before the horse. :laughing:

Hi Jason, thanks for your reply. Personally I don’t see a difference between whether God sees the past or we see the past. My point is is that if there is any existence of a past then that history is fixed, as well as the involvement of a hypertemporal God. God cannot see all of history at the same time and still claim that it can be changed. If he sees the “last event” then the previous events which **caused or created the last event **must have a real existence. If God wanted to change history, then it would be impossible for him to change it because it has already happened, especially with Him being hypertemporal. He could as you mentioned, have “created” and be involved with other parallel realities, however those realities are fixed also, because he would be aware of the last event of those too. Also, it is unlikely that God would create one reality and THEN decide that He wants a different one. That would be adding a past tense to Gods hypertemporalism. All existing realities must have existed from the moment God became “present” which has been for all time (IMO). If there is no past with God then there cannot be any change. Because God cannot see a result and then change his mind, because that result has already happened by God being present at the last event.

In the end I am not sure how multiverses can allow freewill. It just extends the same problems. God would be either picking one and destroying the others or letting them all exist. If God only picks the outcomes he wants and destroys all the realities where I choose something different from what he wants, then how is that freewill? If God allows all these multi realities to exist then how or why on earth would I choose any different? If there was the same or parallel me in alternative realities ultimately choosing different paths then I want to know what made me choose a different path? was it randomness? was it a change of circumstances?
It comes back to the same issue - Freewill can’t be explained.

Cheers

I think we complicate the concept too much. “Freewill” is but the ability to choose. We all know we have it, since we continue to choose throughout each day, every day.

If, in the past, I made choice X under circumstances C, then if I could have chosen not-X under the same circumstances, I have freewill. A determinist or a compatabilist affirms that I could not have chosen not-X under the same circumstance. Determinists and compatablists have freewill themselves, and yet deny that freewill exists. It is this, perhaps, which cannot be explained.

God created man in his own image — with freewill. So God is not responsible for man’s evil choices. One could say that He is responsible for creating man with freewill. True, but that does not make Him the author of evil.

I happen to agree wholeheartedly with you on that, Paidion, but I know that there are some that will call it a non-sequitur.
Your choice of words is very good : He is not the Author of evil.

It’s quite refreshing to see someone so comfortable with this topic and so easily able to understand the implications of the view I laid out. You’ve explained my position very nicely, I believe, even adding some helpful phrases I’d not thought of (“eternal self-determining”).

As far as your commitment to absolute, “God-only” determinism - I disbelieve in this. I think if we say God has determined absolutely everything, that means he’s determined evil. And, unless we’re going to say there is really no such thing as evil in the world, that would mean that God has himself done these evil things. Ergo, God would be evil.

That is the main critique, but several others are there as well. It would make unintelligible, to me, the whole concept of guilt. If I’m only doing an action because I have been preprogrammed to do so, I don’t see how I can be morally responsible - anymore than the bullet would be responsible for the murder rather than the man who shot it. Of course, one could say that since we’re humans, we exhibit a particular feature of consciousness - namely, intentionality - that a bullet cannot have. But I just don’t see how this helps. For if we could program another person, say, to determinately have a certain state of consciousness - if, for instance, I could give someone a pill that made them want to commit murder - I would still be ultimately responsible for the evil done. Absolute determinism also seems to me to posit an incoherence or irreconcilable division in the divine will. If God has indeed determined my sins, how could he sincerely at the same time command I refrain from doing them? I only will to do them because he has so determined me; yet, at the same time he evidently wills I not do them. This presents to me an impossible state of affairs: God simultaneously willing two opposite things. Or another problem with absolute determinism. If we suppose God has created evils so that other goods exist which would otherwise be impossible (e.g. God creates wars so that the virtue of courage can be displayed), this has grave implications concerning God’s perfect goodness, “in whom there is no darkness at all.” It would make goodness as such somehow needing or dependent on evil for the maximization of itself. But this is not my experience or intuition of perfect goodness. When I am enjoying something good, evil as such is nowhere to be found in my mind. Indeed, insofar as it is in my mind, it lessens my experience of goodness. To suppose good needs evil would be equivalent to supposing a marriage needed adultery for it to be best, or that in order to enjoy a beautiful face, one must see many ugly ones. But this, I believe, would make God metaphysically dependent on evil. He would somehow “need” or “desire” it in his inner most being; and this would make him less than perfectly good. Do we really think that every evil in this world somehow makes it better? Would it really have been better for the little girl to have been raped than not? And this leads me to my final criticism. If all evil is justified because it leads to a greater good, it no longer becomes evil. Indeed, to NOT do said “evil” would in fact be evil, since the greater good which necessarily comes from it would never obtain. So if this were true, it would destroy our notions of good and evil altogether and would make making ethical judgments impossible. I can’t imagine anyone would actually find such a view livable.

Just some thoughts! I had a discussion a few years back with an old member of this forum who believed in absolute determinism, and his justification of the existence of evil was that it somehow glorified God’s goodness in an otherwise impossible way. My rebuttal to him was that, if this was so, if, that is, God could not make as good a universe with less evil, he therefore needed evil and was metaphysically dependent on it. And that, to me, is rather more like dualism than classical Christianity. The God of Christianity seems to me to be perfectly, wholly good. He “runs” on goodness alone because that is what he is. There is nothing in him that “requires” evil. His fire is kept alive by pure, whole wood; not refuse.

Hi Chris, thanks for your contributions!

I understand the difficulties you raise in regards to the necessary acceptance of God creating evil within determinism. However, there is also a necessary acceptance of God becoming the author of evil under Freewill. The fact is, God may not have determined in a strict sense a young girl to be raped, but He certainly let it happen. He not only let it happen, He directly planted evil Freewill creatures in a position where that rape was most likely to happen! To then say that God doesn’t have responsibility would be absurd. God in the narrative of Freewill becomes this powerless Being who subjects himself to evil and can only create something good after the chaos has already happened… that he allowed to happen.

Being a determinist like Fe4r (I know him rather well :smiley:), I am sure that Fe4r would reply regarding responsibility, that evil is in the intent and not the action. That is, God intends good from every given situation which then justifies the “evil” acts used within the process. From our perspective, how we judge what is moral is a little different, because we cannot use evil means to justify a good outcome, because we do not know all factors involved.

For me, responsibility means a way of defining where change needs to happen rather than an arbitrary punitive judgement for those who commit crimes. Those who commit crimes, do so for a reason and hence why I believe in a rehabilitation rather than punitive judgement. I believe that God created each and every one of us with fixed natures which is a base that make us who we are. Some of us are harder than others but God wants to use a process where we all eventually can come to Him and subject ourselves and ultimately value His ways. This process creates a necessary demonstration of anti evil and a necessary moulding of the expressions of our natures through experience.
Kind of like - Without John Newton experiencing the slave trade we would never have “Amazing Grace”. John Newton is responsible for what he did in that it was his nature that allowed him to make those decisions. However, God knows him better and then directs him towards the potential that his nature is able to be. This process although terrible in many ways, proclaims a triumph of good over evil.

Paidion
What I meant earlier when I said that Freewill cannot be explained I meant that no one can tell me why I choose God over my neighbour. If I have option A or B before me and I am not pushed towards one or the other, then I suppose this is the closest explanation of a truly free will. However, with this complete freedom of choice, how could I ever chose A or B? I would merely be rolling a dice as to which one I would go with. In fact I could not even choose A or B because I have an equal desire to choose both which then cancels each other out. This makes it impossible to make a choice.
Unless we believe that effects can have no causes. Though, I am not quite that bold :smiley:

I don’t have time to re-read my comment through and edit it, so I hope it makes some sense lol.

Appreciate all your comments; I’ve struggled with the issue(s) for years; it’s a tough nut to crack.

However, I will reiterate my contention, that because we have two opposing answers, it does not follow that either is correct, or that we must dialectically ‘split the difference’ to get to the ‘truth’ of the matter.

In other words, it could be the fact that God is unapproachable Light, that there are no shadows in Him, that He will never lie nor commit sin, nor be the Author of evil; and that the answer to the intolerable intellectual questions that we are so concerned about, and rightly so, is simply beyond our ken.

Am I satisfied with that? No. But I am much less satisfied with speculative answers (and yeah, I’ve speculated my butt off on this :smiley: ) that impute, to the Maker of the Universe and Lord of all things, any taint of imperfection, let alone imputation of evil.

No. You can be “pushed” toward either one, and still choose the other.

No. Non-determinism is not tantamount to randomness. When you make a choice, you yourself are the cause of your action.

There is always a basis for choice. At a Dairy Queen, I have an equal desire for a chocolate milkshake, and a butterfinger blizzard. I don’t say, “Eeny, meeny, miny, mo.” Rather I do some consideration. I’ll choose the milkshake to go, since I don’t have much time, and the blizzard tomorrow. My lack of time doesn’t cause me to choose the milkshake. I could have chosen the blizzard instead and taken the extra time instead of completing the task I intended to do.

YOU ARE THE CAUSE OF YOUR ACTIONS NOT THE CIRCUMSTANCES. THE CIRCUMSTANCES ARE INFLUENCES BUT NOT CAUSES. Even if a thief holds a gun to your head and demands your money, this doesn’t cause you to hand over your money. You could choose not to do so, even if you are fully aware of the possible consequences.

“Every effect has a cause” is a tautology — like saying, “What will be will be.” The very word “effect” refers to that which was caused. Tautologies have no practical meaning. However, “Every event has a cause” DOES have practical meaning. I will even concede that to be true. But many times the cause of an event is not another event. The cause of many events can be traced to freewill agents themselves.

I don’t think this follows. God may permit evil and still not actually be its author. On my view, all evil is permitted only because his free created creatures require it to reach perfection. What free creatures do is not something God has causal power over. That’s something he’s “given up” by limiting his omnipotence and granting them freedom. Insofar as their choices are evil, they are true “obstacles” God must work around. What it takes to actually get them to reach perfection themselves may require all sorts of ways of dealing with them that are, to God, less than ideal but, due to their freedom, necessary. This is quite different from your view, which actually destroys the notion of “permission” altogether.

As for your other comments, it seems to me they all rely on the idea that God must have evil in order to maximize his own goodness. I don’t believe God is metaphysically dependent on evil in such a way.

Regarding free will and it amounting to “effects without causes”. I have little to add to what Paidion said, but I’ll say this. What you say is only true if you assume a deterministic interpretation of reality. Of course, if you believe determinism to be true, you can always go back to a given choice and say that the motives actually cause, rather than only influence, the choice. But I see no reason to believe that the only sort of interactive nexus that exists in reality is a deterministic one. I experience my own freedom all the time every day. That is enough justification for its existence, since that experience is just as strong as any sense experience or empirical judgment. Not to mention that if I didn’t believe in it, I’d have to believe God caused all the evil and sin in the world himself.

All I am saying is that with FREEWILL one has to accept paradox a lot sooner than a determinist. When it comes to why we choose A or B you say that WE choose. A determinist will ask further and ask what is it within us (or outside us) that caused us to chose A? Was it because at that moment A looked more attractive to me in my subconscious? We all know that we do not make free choices. Why is it that we always buy Coke over here in New Zealand? Advertising would tell us why, not my Freewill. We are subject to our senses at a conscious level, and if not at a subconscious level. (IMO) lol.
Determinism explains more, or at least seeks to explain more.

I have seen the destructive power of Freewill thought in elections and attitudes to the poor lately. People seem to think that the poor are “just lazy” and that they freely choose to be lazy and poor. Just plain ignorance I reckon. I know that most of you will not see the poor in such a way, but this kind of thinking is a result from a destructive belief in Freewill. Frustrating… The poor don’t collectively gather together because they want to hang out with lazy people. We learn our actions and values from those around us. They don’t come from no where.

Are you saying Chris that because we have Freewill, God didn’t account in his plan/creation little girls getting raped? IMO, if I place a child in the care of someone who I know is extremely capable of raping her, am I not responsible? I was a big part of that causal process whether there is Freewill or not. Can’t God create us all in our own environments of potential sin where “innocent” babies etc are out of harms way? The difference I see between Freewill collateral evil and deterministic evil is that God is in control of all circumstances in the latter and not in the former. With determinism there is hope that God will work every circumstance out for good, but with Freewill, there are actions that God did not account for (or else he would be responsible).

Thanks for the discussion guys! So nice to freely discuss these hard topics.

And that is precisely the problem with determinism. Determinists presume that choices are caused by something or somebody external to the chooser. There are no external causes of a person’s choices—only external influences. Nor are there internal causes beyond the metaphysical self—only internal influences. The “first cause” of a free-will agent’s actions is the free-will agent himself.

I understand that determinists and compatibilists affirm that a person acts freely if there are no external restraints to his choices. Believers in libertarian free affirm that a person P acts freely if, having chosen action A at time T in circumstances C, could have chosen to have refrained from performing action A at time T. Both determinists and compatibilists (“soft” determinists) deny this.

I realise that people aren’t put in boxes as to what will cause them to do certain actions, that is why we talk about influences rather than causes. However, that is only a calculability issue. What it comes down to is that external influences mean that they influence or have a definite effect on the object. IMO an influence cannot logically have much of an effect in Freewill thought or else that would be manipulation towards a definite end, thus severely questioning our “free choices”. This influence is demonstrated in the existence of culture and cyclic generational learnings as I mentioned prior. Can we really ultimately blame a lazy person involved in a “group think” mentality for choosing to succumb to the strong influences around them? Even if the minority do choose against this influence in the end, I wonder what effect the influence was REALLY having on them? What is the point of an influence having an effect on an object if it merely suggests an outcome, when it is so evident that influences really do determine (to a degree) what lifestyle one can have?
Can we really call people who are involved in cyclic generational family abuse responsible for carrying that abuse onto their children?
Can we really call people who are from positive families responsible for reflecting that positive environment onto their children?
I didn’t “freely” choose a positive lifestyle for my family, I was taught it from the very effective influences around me (Thank God for that). From that, I can’t then reach out and blame those in abusive families for not exercising their free wills to create positive environments “like I have”, because I believe that influences actually manipulate our “free wills”.

Blaming the victim mentality is often the result of Freewill thought.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that any of you believe people are totally free. I just question whether people can really logically be held responsible (In a Freewill sense) for succumbing to influences around them. Because the fact is, the majority (if not all) of people do reflect their environments.

I have known a significant number of people who chose to live their lives contrary to their home environment. I have known people from “bad” homes turn our “good”, and people from “good” homes turn out bad.

But you are correct in that, if determinism is true, then no one can be held responsible for his actions.

A bit of tongue and cheek really. I do think that people CAN be held “responsible” under determinism. My idea as mentioned before is a bit different to the general understanding of responsibility. I was merely pointing out that there is a heap of evidence that even under Freewill thought, there is sin that people commit that directly reflect their environments. These people are under pressure to sin in certain environments, in a way that others are not. They more often succumb to that sin due to the pressures around them, and others in different environments do not. According to Freewill thought, how can they be held “responsible” when those influences actually have a definite affect on what they will choose to do? Their choice was obviously not totally free, but rather manipulated.

For those of you that don’t mind reading some philosophy (well-written, succinct) on this subject and the Problem of Evil, I just posted a very good article by Bill Vallicella (MavPhi) in the studies - articles - section of the forum.

Highly recommended imo.

Thanks Dave, will have read when I get a chance :slight_smile: