Howard and Bob,
The first thing I note from the quotation from Hartshorne is that its
language is emotionally loaded. I understand the use of such language,
for my colleagues told me they always had their classes in "Logic in
Practice" analyze my letters to the editor. In these I was deliberately
involved in propaganda, not an unemotional rational analysis of ideas. So
I need to cut to whatever rational underpinnings there may be.
Before getting to that, I note that Polkinghorne presents a problem in
the last sentence here quoted. Contrary to what he says, an omnipotent
God does not "allow" things to be: he rather sets the principles by which
they exist and function, and providentially holds them to those
principles. He is not the kind of deity of the pagans, influenced by whim
but subject to ananke, an external necessity. Since he is orderly
(evidenced by the effectiveness of scientific investigations), we can
speak of causal necessity. Logicians have described a logically necessary
statement as one true in all possible worlds, all that are consistent.
(There is only one impossible, i.e., inconsistent, world, but many
possible ones.) Causal necessity holds in all worlds "like" ours, that
is, involving statements that hold in our world with a limited amount of
tinkering. However, I have not found anyone who can precisely specify the
likeness or the allowable amount of tinkering, which is most evident in
counterfactuals. It is usually within causal necessity that we speak of
determinism.
Modern physics has presented us with the problem of indeterminism in
quantum mechanics. It is clear that there is a limit to prediction, but
it cannot be understood as totally outside of regulation, a pure chaos.
But this is a side issue in connection with causality, one which has not
been solved.
There is a different area involving human beings which has often been
mistaken for indeterminism, human freedom. Actually, free will or choice
falls under a special type of determinism, self-determination, an area
where we are, though limited, initiating causes. (Only God is an
unlimited or unrestricted originating or initiating cause.) This human
freedom cannot be demonstrated empirically, but is assumed by all,
including dogmatic determinists.
It is my opinion that God so values the freedom he has given us that the
ultimate principle of morality may be to do that which provides the
maximum amount of liberty for all. It seems very clear that God intended
creatures who could choose to love him, even though that also meant that
they could reject him and his love for them. May I suggest that even God
cannot create entities who must (i.e., of necessity, not of duty) choose
to love him.
Consequently, Hartshorne is not opposing a rational notion of an
omnipotent Creator, but the confused view that equates knowing with
causing, that mistakenly claims that omnipotence requires that God
strictly determine every event in his creation--though this has been
argued by some who claim to be Calvinists, it is a perverse caricature of
God and creation, as is Hartshorne's. Were the latter correct, we'd have
to revise Romans 8:30f (NIV):
For those God foreknew (along with some others about whom he was
mistaken, but missing some he was not aware of, for everything does its
own thing apart from him) he also predestinated (to the extent possible
in a universe not totally under his control) to be conformed to the
likeness of his Son (which we can only say not because things worked out
so that the Son came in the flesh, but beyond which we cannot be sure) .
. . . And those he predestinated, he also called (to the extent possible
given unanticipated, indeed, unpredictable, consequences); those he
called, he also justified (at least we hope he was able to, and did);
those he justified, he also glorified (though here we are way out on a
limb because things may not work out as hoped).
Dave
On Thu, 28 Mar 2002 13:18:29 -0500 "Howard J. Van Till"
<hvantill@novagate.com> writes:
>From: "Robert Schneider" <rjschn39@bellsouth.net>
> Polkinghorne writes:
>
> "An Oxford theologian, Austin Farrar, once asked himself what was
God's
> will in the Lisbon earthquake? This terrible disaster took place on
All
> Saints Day in 1755. The churches were full and they all collapsed,
killing
> 50 thousand people. It was a most bitter example of natural evil.
Farrar's
> answer was hard but true. God's will was that the elements of the
earth's
> crust should behave in accordance with their nature. In other words,
they
> are allowed to be in their own way, just as we are allowed to be in
ours."
I like Farrar's answer, as far as it goes. But perhaps this is more than
a matter of God (presumed to be omnipotent) merely _allowing_ things to
be "in their own way." Maybe it is necessary that things (creatures) must
be in their own way. Perhaps it is in the nature of God and of the
God/world relationship that the being of no creature is ever coercively
overpowered. If God could have intervened to prevent human suffering and
death in Lisbon, or in Afghanistan, but chose not to, then is not God
still culpable? Does voluntary self-limitation actually eliminate
culpability? Seems too facile to me.
The problem may well be in the traditional (and humanly crafted) doctrine
of divine omnipotence -- ascribing to God the power to do essentially
_anything_, including overpowering creaturely action. Not all theological
systems incorporate omnipotence in their portrait of God. Here's a sample
from a system that does not:
Our rejection of omnipotence will be attacked by the charge, "So, you
dare to limit the power of God?" Not so, I impose no such limit if this
means, as it seems to imply, that Godıs power fails to live up to some
genuine ideal. All I have said is that omnipotence as usually conceived
is a false and absurd ideal, which in truth limits God, denies to him any
world worth talking about: a world of living, that is to say, significant
decision-making, agents. It is the tradition which did indeed terribly
limit divine power, the power to foster creativity even to the least of
the creatures.
No worse falsehood was ever perpetrated than the traditional concept of
omnipotence. It is a piece of unconscious blasphemy, condemning God to a
dead world, probably not distinguishable from no world at all.
The root of all evil, suffering, misfortune, wickedness, is the same as
the root of all good, joy, happiness, and that is freedom, decision
making. Life is not and cannot be other than a mixture of the two.
Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes, p. 17,
18.
Howard Van Till
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