Spirituality, Religion, Nature

 

 

 

Is God Free to Create the World?

 

Is he Necessary or Contingent, Transcendent or Immanent?

 

 

The Roots of the Problem.  It seems that there has been a terrible confusion in the way that theism has interpreted God for centuries; when we try to put all the pieces together we realize that that is impossible. On one side the theist God is a perfect God: necessary, infinite, immutable, a timeless-transcendent Being; and, at the same time, a God who moves along with the changes of the world, human life included: a temporal, contingent-immanent God. That is impossible!

 

As long as we have memory philosophers and theologians—from Plato and Augustine, through Thomas Aquinas, to present philosophers and theologians,—have tried to combine in God attributes that are irreconcilable: a perfect, infinite, transcendent God, and at the same time a moving, changing, immanent God. That is not possible: there is here a mismatch that transcends religion; an enigma that perhaps won’t be solved, ever.

 

There is a conflict between the necessary God and a contingent universe; this clash between God’s necessity and the contingency of the world, is well expounded by Keith Ward when he says:

 

If God really is a necessary and immutable being, how can he have a free choice; surely all that  he does will have to be done of necessity and without any possibility of alteration? The old dilemma—either God’s acts are necessary and therefore not free (could not be otherwise), or they are free and therefore arbitrary (nothing determines what they shall be)—has been sufficient to impale the vast majority of Christian philosophers down the ages. [1]

 

If God is the creator or cause of a contingent world, he must be contingent and temporal; but if God is a necessary being, then whatever he causes must be necessarily and changelessly caused… Creation seems to demand a contingent, temporal God, who interacts with creation and is, therefore, not self-sufficient. But how can it be both? [2]

 

It is clear by this authoritative quote that there is a problem when we try to put together the transcendence and immanence of God; transcendence and immanence cannot be simultaneously in the way that theism has interpreted these two qualities of God. God might be the perfect, immutable, necessary God, and accept all the consequences of this view; or God might be the contingent, temporal and changing God with all its corollaries. The two views cannot stand together because they involve properties which are opposite and contradictory; they cannot be at the same time, in the same person. We must choose between the perfect and transcendent God, or the immanent and contingent God. To create a contingent world, the necessity, immutability and atemporality of God must be broken, and God would start being a temporal and contingent God.

 

Some modern theologians have tried to solve the “puzzle” using different theories as process theology—an interpretation influenced by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne,—with a kind of “dual” God who could combine necessity and contingency, transcendence and immanence. Physicist Paul Davies confesses his “hard struggle trying to understand the philosophical convolutions needed to justify a diapolar God,” [3] to no avail. Other theologians solve the problem by way of complexity, as in Peacocke’s panentheism, introducing complexities in God which are, in my opinion, no more than another form of duality of God with a different name. [4] To reconcile transcendence and contingency in God, they give up the cherished and perfect God, who is essentially simplex.

 

As for me and for my logic I have “solved” the problem of the transcendent-immanent God through the “oneness” with God, as I have elaborated in other papers. [5] Without giving an answer to this problem, yet, we may wonder whether free choice is a property of the transcendent God.

 

What is freedom? Freedom is choice, change, movement, time. Free will entails contingency, and supposes choice among several alternatives, because one action is free only if it could have been otherwise. Freedom implies to be unbound and unconstrained by any power or force, by any given principle, circumstance, condition, obligation or necessity; no restraints, no limitation to choice, to make a selection.

 

These are some of the characteristics of human freedom:

 

1.     Options: ability to chose from different alternatives, each one offering different kind of goods.

2.     Limitation: the choice of freedom involves limitation because any selection cannot have all the goods simultaneously.

3.     Risk: freedom involves risks; the outcome of the selection is uncertain; it might produce an unintended effect.

4.     Time: freedom requires time’s duration while the will makes a decision.

5.     Lacks totality: each selection lacks the integrity of having all the goods together; if one good is chosen, there are others missed. As I said, freedom involves limitation.

 

When women or men make a choice they do according to their nature which is contingent; but in God it is the other way around. God is the necessary Being and, as such, his action is necessary.

 

Regarding the freedom in God and the creation of a universe there are two points to consider:

 

1.     Whether God may act freely, and if the act of creation is a free action.

2.     Whether God is free to create this world or a different world. [6]

 

No Freedom in God. Regarding the first question the answer is that there is no freedom in God in the same way as we, humans, are free and as we understand freedom. The reason is because freedom implies change, time, and potential. None of these can be said of a perfect God. God is “constrained” by his own necessity, timeless and immutable essence. Freedom is a limited quality, subject to the possibility of change and error; this cannot be said of God in whom there is no potential because he is only act, one action.

 

Freedom is per se a temporal quality that implies changeable actions; it is a selection among several choices; freedom is movement and change. None of these could be predicated of a necessary, immutable and timeless being. Choice and necessity are opposite concepts; they are contradictory and cannot be simultaneously in the same person.

 

As I have “proved” in other documents, God is the necessary being and, as  operari sequitur esse—which is the act of doing something follows the act of being, or that any agent acts in conformity with its being—if the being of God is necessary, he acts by necessity; everything that God does, he does by necessity, and there is no freedom in God. God is only one pure and necessary act: TO BE. All God does is to be, necessarily, unchangeably. “To be” comprises everything that is or could be; it is through this act of being that everything is. No freedom in God. In fact, God does not need freedom because he knows everything; he knows what is best, and through one action he does everything in a perfect way and free of error.

 

Freedom of God Regarding the Universe. The other question is if God is free to create or not to create, or if he can create a different universe. We must say that a posteriori, subsequent to creation, we have to say that the act of creation is necessary, and that God is not free to create or not to create; some kind of universe, or matter, or creation, must exist. Theism teaches that the act of creation is an act of the free will of God; but this seems to contradict its own teachings.

 

The immediate and most logical conclusion that we may infer from these statements is that the concept of God is necessarily and inseparably attached to the world; or, in other words, God-world must be a “unity” as I explained in the essay quoted above; [7] the universe is by the same act that God is. Believers in God are forced to accept no other God than the Intelligence and Power revealed and present in Nature. A God different from this Wisdom evidently manifested in the world is not.

 

I clarify what this means. I do not say that material things in themselves are God (what kind of god this would be! Only matter? That would be a stupidity!). What God is, is not something but Somebody giving existence to all that is, the Existence of all the universe; [8] or clearer, a Somebody-something. Can we give a proof of this interpretation? No, we cannot; there is not empirical evidence of any theistic God, nor of any atheistic interpretation of the universe; we have only unproved theories. But this one—of an infinite Mind, or Force which is metaphysically and ontologically present even in the physical world—is, in my opinion, the most reasonable conclusion from the observation of the universe. If there is a God—and there is One—this God must be a Being whose Nature exists not only metaphysically, but is also physically manifested.

 

Why this particular universe and no other? Regarding whether God could create a different universe, we may say that the omniscient God knows in a glance the best of all possibilities, and his action follows necessarily his knowledge. There is no rational reason to think that God “selects” a less than perfect world; any “choice” made by God is the most perfect that a selection could be; his “decision” to create this material universe is in itself the most perfect. And, if there is some “unity” God-world as I said, this unity must also be the most perfect; and this material universe is the most perfect that material things could be. The universe is a kind of “incarnation” of God. Peacocke has some interesting reflections on this subject as when he says:

 

Christians have an even stronger reason for a positive affirmation of both the reality and the worth of the created order—namely, the doctrine of the incarnation. Whether Christians understand this doctrine in its classical more “mythical” form (which I have denoted by ‘Incarnation’, with capital ‘I’) or in the more continuous, immanentist form (‘incarnation’. With small ‘i’) for which I argued in the previous lecture, it had profound implications for man’s understanding of nature. [9]

 

I clarify however what I mean when I say “the best” of all possible universes. I mean the best among those universes endowed with the goods this universe has. There could be other universes with other characteristics, but not as perfect as the actual universe is; and they wouldn’t contain all the goods that this universe has; this universe is the best in its “class.” The omniscient God knows all possibilities and alternatives and makes the right decision, selecting the best of all possible worlds.

 

Is then this world necessary? Yes, but this affirmation needs an explanation. See essay “Whether the Idea of God is Superfluous? - Reflections About an Eternal Universe.”

 

Alternatively classical theism embraces the position of freedom in God and argues that God is a necessary being who creates a contingent universe as an act of his free will. This position is fraught with philosophical difficulties, and the most commonly suggested theoretical solution is that of a dualist God.

 

The “oneness” resolution. As I said before, I have “solved” in my mind the philosophical problem (or impossibility) of a kind of duality in God (a duality that theism does not recognize, but that is there) through a holistic view of God-world and world-God; a kind of “oneness” God-creation that cannot be expressed or explained with words. [10] It is simply a mystery: God is all, all-that-is.

 

 

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HTM NATURE / NECESSARY NATURE   03-12-11


[1] Keith Ward, Rational Theology and the Creative God, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), 73

[2] Ibid., 3

[3] Paul Davies, The Mind of God (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1992), 183

[4] Arthur Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science (Oxford: University Press, 2004)

[5] Essay “Whether the Idea of God is Superfluous? - Reflections About an Eternal Universe,” on this web page. You may see also the book Intimacy With God, or other essays published in this web page.

[6] The use of the present form is due to the presentness of God: God is only present, with no past and no future.; even creation is a present act, not a past action, ax explained in other essays.

[7] “Whether the Idea of God is Superfluous? - Reflections About an Eternal Universe.”

[8] See essay “Is God a person or personal? If not, what?”

[9] Arthur Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science (Oxford: University Press, 2007), 289. See also 242.

[10] This is one of the main subjects developed in the book Intimacy With God. I elaborated there in detail the “oneness” in God.