Our Idea Of God: Ch. 1

Front 1

What is philosophical theology?

Back 1

The aim of philosophical theology is to employ the best of philosophical methods and techniques for the purpose of gaining as much clarity as possible concerning the content of the major concepts, presuppositions, and tenets of theological commitment, as well as the many connections that exist among them. (pp. 16-17)

Front 2

What is the source of the idea that God is so far beyond us that he eludes all our attempts at conceptualizing and defining him?

Back 2

As creator of the world, God, who is utterly transcendent is by nature not himself a thing in the world which we can perceive with our bodily senses. And as the bearer of only extraordinary properties, God would have to be very different from all those things in his created world with which we are familiar. Thus it is these two things – his distinctness from any perceptible thing in the world and dissimilarity to anything in the world – that has given rise to a reason for thinking that God must ultimately be recognized to be beyond the conceptual grasp of us, his creatures. (p. 17)

Front 3

How has it been argued that human concepts cannot possibly apply to God? Present an argument using two premises and a conclusion.

Back 3

(1) Human concepts have been developed to apply to things of the world. (2) God is not a thing of the world. So, (3) Human concepts cannot apply to God. (p. 17)

Front 4

Why is this argument a bad one? Present the hidden premise.

Back 4

(HP) For every x and every y, if x was not developed to apply to y, then x cannot apply to y. (p. 18)

Front 5

How has it been argued that human language cannot apply to God?

Back 5

It has been argued that the sole possible function of at least the descriptive forms of human language is to encode previous experience. If human language was developed to encode our experience of the physical world, and God is not an item in the physical world, it can be inferred from this perspective that human language cannot apply to God. (p. 18)

Front 6

Why is this argument a bad one?

Back 6

Because it cannot be the case that language just encodes previous experience. If it did only that, we would never be able to describe a new experience without inventing a new world. Presumably this would also keep us from being able to communicate with another person since two different people never have a strictly identical history of experiences. Therefore, human language is rather an inherently flexible device, or an array of such devices. (p. 18)

Front 7

What does it mean for two beings to differ in ontological status?

Back 7

Two beings differ in ontological status just in case they are fundamentally different kinds of being, in the sense that what it is for one of them to exist (the conditions and nature of its existence) is quite unlike what it is for the other to exist. (p. 19)

Front 8

Earlier we saw the argument advanced that said that human concepts cannot apply to God since these were developed to apply to things of the world and God is not a thing of the world. What is another way skeptics have argued for the conclusion that human concepts cannot apply to God?

Back 8

Skeptics have also argued for this conclusion based upon God’s extremely different ontological status, or stature in the realm of existence. Since all human concepts either apply to things in the world or are built up out of component concepts which apply to things in the world, if God is radically enough unlike anything in the world, and if this is because of what God and things of the world are by nature, then we must conclude that human concepts cannot in fact apply to God. (p. 19)

Front 9

What are two ways of construing the ambiguous premise: “God is unlike anything in the world”? Why is this an important distinction?

Back 9

(A1) God is not completely like anything in the world; and (A2) God is completely unlike everything in the world. This is an important distinction because traditional theists accept A1 but reject A2. (p. 20)

Front 10

The difference between A1 and A2 is like that between another set of propositions that have to do with God sharing his properties. Consider the following two sentences: (S1) Eat all the cookies you want; and (S2) Eat any cookies you want. Both can be used colloquially to say basically the same thing. Using the same difference that is found in S1 and S2, what are the two propositions, B1 and B2, hinted at above?

Back 10

(B1) God does not share all properties with anything else; and (B2) God does not share any properties with anything else. (p. 20)

Front 11

Why is B2 (God does not share any properties with anything else) is impossible?

Back 11

If God and worldly things could share no properties in common, due to their difference in ontological status, then, contrary to this supposition, they would then have to share at least one property in common: (P) The property of having a set of properties not shared by some being with a very different ontological status. So the claim is true only if it is false. (p. 21)

Front 12

Similarly, why is the conceptual claim of theological pessimism also impossible? (TP) No human concepts can apply to God.

Back 12

If TP were true, if no human concepts could apply to God, then at least one human concept would have to apply to him, namely, (C) The concept of being such as to escape characterization by human concepts. (p. 21)

Front 13

But these responses, P and C, are not effective against the skeptic who argues that even if P and C are true, still there is no possibility of any interesting or extended theological knowledge of God. Sure, God may be said to be identical with himself, to be at least as great as himself, and so on, but these concepts indicate nothing about God that is distinctive. How can we respond?

Back 13

We could ask what grounds could a theological pessimist have for holding such a view? To claim that God escapes characterization by most substantive, informative human concepts is to make a fairly weighty claim which itself seems to imply or presuppose some pretty important knowledge about God. Whereas the more extreme theological pessimism fell to a logical difficulty, this kind appears to fall to an epistemological difficulty. (p. 22)

Front 14

How does moderate theological pessimism falter epistemologically?

Back 14

We see that it fails simply by asking, If it were true, how could any of us know it to be true? It would seem that a certain amount of knowledge of God, and thus a certain amount of applicability to God of substantive, informative, nontrivial human concepts, would be required in order for us to have any good grounds for such a sweeping view of deity. Thus, it seems that moderate theological pessimism is epistemologically self-defeating. It denies the conditions under which alone we could have any reason to think it s content, and thus its denials, to be true. It has the odd characteristic of being such that if it were true, we could have no good grounds for thinking it true. (p. 22)

Front 15

Some theologians, impressed by the extreme difference of the divine, have taken a different tack here. They have not made the extreme and logically incoherent claim that no human concepts can apply to God; nor the more moderate claim that no substantive, informative human concepts can hold true of deity. Rather, they have endorsed negative theology, the via negativa concerning the things of God. What is this via negativa?

Back 15

This approach to theology does not deny that human concepts of any sort can be applied to God, it just consists in the claim that human concepts can be applied to God only negatively. We cannot, on this view, say what God is, only what he is not. According to the via negativa, the main point of all the attributes traditionally associated with God is that they deny limitations of God. It is in what they deny or negate, not in what they affirm, that traditional claims about God convey knowledge. (pp. 22-23)

Front 16

It is one thing to turn back various challenges to the possibility of doing theology in a positive mode. It is another matter altogether to locate some ground for confidence in our abilities here. Despite our ability to resist various forms of theological skepticism and negativity, how can we think we can even begin to approach knowledge concerning the ultimate source of all?

Back 16

In dealing with ultimate religious matters, we are dealing with matters much higher and deeper than those we ordinarily contemplate. So in attempting to discourse rationally about God, we most likely will have to stretch our cognitive abilities to their maximum extent. We should not expect it to be very easy, nor should we be surprised that in order to stretch our cognitive grasp, we may occasionally have to stretch our concepts and our ordinary language far beyond the circumstances of their usual employment. (p. 24)

Front 17

But is human language and thought flexible enough for this sort of stretching?

Back 17

Yes, for consider the fact that in many other realms of human cognitive endeavor, ordinary language successfully bridges the common and the extraordinary, the familiar and the extremely unfamiliar. Consider physics and gourmet wine tasting – we do not have language ready-made for all the discoveries of physicists or all the discriminations of the palate. But we learn to use what we have in novel ways, and do so successfully. So there is some general ground for optimism concerning the flexibility and potential reach of human concepts. (p. 24)

Front 18

But why think that we can stretch our cognitive and linguistic grasp so far as to be able to comprehend something so utterly different as God?

Back 18

Although in the biblical worldview there is no metaphysical gap as great as that between the divine creator of all and any of his creations, there is in fact a belief deeply imbedded in this worldview that between God and at least one sort of creature there exists an important point of contact. This is the imago Dei. This doctrine is boosted by another doctrine, namely, the doctrine that we have been created by a perfectly good and loving God for the purpose of having communion with him. These two doctrines help us see how it is that we can think the enterprise of using language to come to apprehend God can be a successful one. (pp. 24-25)

Front 19

The imago Dei?

Back 19

The precise meaning of this has been a matter of dispute. But any reasonable interpretation will hold that between whatever is characteristic of the best of human existence, and whatever is distinctive of God, there is a deep-lying consonance. Many commentators hold that the moral, spiritual, and intellectual capacities of humans, together with their creative employment, are what reflect or image the divine. (p. 25)

Front 20

But don’t the doctrines of the imago Dei, and the purpose of human creation already presuppose that we can have substantive knowledge of God? They seem clearly to do this, and if so, then they cannot be appealed to in a noncircular argument for this theological optimism as a conclusion.

Back 20

Here we must point out that the possibility of any kind of basic knowledge cannot be demonstrated by means of noncircular, nonquestion-begging arguments, by arguments that do not in any way already presume to some extent that to which they intend to lend some support. The unavailability of any such noncircular argument for the possibility of theological knowledge would thus not render theology a suspect cognitive enterprise. (p. 25)

Front 21

But if we already begin with our conclusion being true, what can we possibly hope to learn?

Back 21

In addition to being presuppositions, these doctrines also play an interesting role in laying out possible grounds for defending those presuppositions and for understanding how in fact they can be true. Just like some degree of scientific optimism is required for scientific activity, the same is true for theological optimism and theological activity. (p. 26)

Front 22

So, our presuppositions can, theoretically, turn out to be false?

Back 22

Theoretically, yes, for the proof is in the testing. It is one thing to resist the theological pessimist, and even to sketch out possible grounds for theological optimism, it is another to come to see that such optimism is indeed well founded. Can we come to have a knowledge of God’s nature? The only way to know is to try and see. Will we find our attempts to speak of God thwarted by obscurity and contradiction? Or, on the contrary, will we find our efforts enjoying apparent success, corroborating our initial confidence, our optimism about the theological project? (p. 26)