3.3.1 - Divine attributes and time

The Problem Of The God Concept

The word "God" can be too quick. If it simply means "a very powerful supernatural being", then many later arguments become unclear. An ontological, cosmological or teleological argument is not just trying to show that something unusual exists. It is trying to reach a being with a particular kind of nature. Likewise, an objection to the concept of God needs a clear target: which attribute is meant, and how strong is the claim?

AQA begins Metaphysics of God with the concept and nature of God because the later debates depend on this starting point. The central concept is usually the God of classical theism: a single divine being who is all-knowing, all-powerful, supremely good, and related to time in a special way.

This first problem can be reconstructed like this:

Claim at issue: We need precise meanings for divine attributes before assessing arguments about God.

1. P1: A philosophical argument or objection can only be assessed if its key terms have clear meanings.
2. P2: The concept of God in AQA Metaphysics of God is built from attributes such as omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence, plus a view about God's relation to time.
3. P3: If those attributes are left vague, later arguments and objections will attack different concepts without noticing.
4. Therefore, C: The first task is conceptual analysis of the divine attributes and God's relation to time.

Hidden assumption: The divine attributes are not merely devotional labels; they make claims that can be philosophically analysed.
Inference type: Conceptual and methodological reasoning.
Main pressure point: The attributes must be defined strongly enough to be distinctively divine, but not so strongly that the concept becomes immediately incoherent.

Aquinas is useful at this starting point for two different reasons. In Summa Theologica Part 1, Question 2, Article 3, he offers the Five Ways as attempts to demonstrate the existence of God from effects in the world. Those existence arguments are for later lessons. Here the limited point is that an argument for God needs to know what kind of being its conclusion is meant to identify. In Part 1, Question 25, Article 3, Aquinas gives a careful account of omnipotence, which this lesson uses as a model of attribute analysis.

The Three Omni-Attributes

The prefix "omni" means all. In philosophy of religion, however, the omni-attributes need more than the slogan "all-everything". Each attribute needs a careful meaning.

Some accounts use an unrestricted “anything” definition of omnipotence. Aquinas instead argues that contradictions are not genuine tasks. Distinguish those accounts when explaining power; a question about the attribute alone does not automatically require Aquinas’s restriction.

The three attributes do different work. Omniscience concerns knowledge. Omnipotence concerns power. Omnibenevolence concerns goodness. A strong answer keeps those separate before combining them.

The classical package can be reconstructed like this:

Claim at issue: The God of classical theism is a maximally perfect personal being.

1. P1: A maximally perfect personal being would not be limited by ignorance.
2. P2: A maximally perfect personal being would not be limited by lack of power over what is genuinely possible.
3. P3: A maximally perfect personal being would not be morally defective.
4. Therefore, C: If God is understood as a maximally perfect personal being, God should be understood as omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent.

Hidden assumption: Knowledge, power and goodness are perfections when understood in the right way.
Inference type: Conceptual reasoning about perfection.
Main pressure point: The perfections may create tensions when combined, especially with time, freedom and evil.

That last pressure point matters, but it should not be rushed. The next lesson handles the detailed incoherence arguments. This lesson makes sure the terms are sharp enough for those arguments to be understood.

Aquinas On Omnipotence

Omnipotence is the easiest attribute to state and one of the easiest to misunderstand. "God can do anything" sounds clear until we ask whether "anything" includes contradictions, such as making a square circle or making it true that something both happened and did not happen in the same respect.

Aquinas's answer in Summa Theologica Part 1, Question 25, Article 3 is that omnipotence concerns what is absolutely possible.

A contradiction is not a very difficult task. It is not a coherent task at all.

The key argument can be reconstructed like this:

Claim at issue: Omnipotence should be defined as power over all absolutely possible things.

1. P1: Power is directed at possible objects or states of affairs.
2. P2: A contradiction is not a possible object or state of affairs, because its terms cancel each other.
3. P3: Failing to do what is not possible is not a real limitation of power.
4. Therefore, C: God can be omnipotent even though God cannot bring about contradictions.

Hidden assumption: Logical possibility is not an external power stronger than God; it is a condition for a description counting as a coherent possible state of affairs.
Inference type: Conceptual analysis of power and possibility.
Main pressure point: A critic may ask whether this restricts God too much, or whether it simply clarifies what "can do" means.

This also helps with Aquinas's treatment of sin. On his view, the fact that God cannot sin is not a weakness. Sinning is a defect in action or will, not a power that a perfect being would be better for having. The same pattern is important: not every sentence of the form "God cannot X" names a limit on omnipotence. Sometimes it names a pseudo-task or a defect.

The detailed paradox of the stone is taught in the next lesson. For now, the exam-useful point is this: omnipotence is not best analysed as the ability to make contradictions true. A more careful account says that divine power covers all genuine possibilities.

Timeless And Everlasting

AQA requires two competing views of God's relationship to time: God as timeless, also called eternal in this specification, and God as within time, also called everlasting.

In ordinary English, "eternal" sometimes means "lasting forever". In this AQA topic, be more precise:

The distinction can be reconstructed like this:

Claim at issue: Timelessness and everlastingness are not the same view.

1. P1: If God is timeless, there is no before and after in God's own life.
2. P2: If God is everlasting, God exists at all times but still has before and after in God's own life.
3. P3: Having no temporal succession is different from having endless temporal succession.
4. Therefore, C: A timeless God and an everlasting God are two different accounts of God's relationship to time.

Hidden assumption: A being's relation to time is partly determined by whether its own life involves succession.
Inference type: Conceptual distinction.
Main pressure point: Whether a living personal God can be timeless without losing features such as knowledge, will and action.