The Nature of God
THE ISSUES
How would you explain to an alien what people mean by ‘God’? Is it possible to make logical sense of religious claims that God is eternal, omnipotent and omniscient?
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN ABOUT IN THISCHAPTER STARTER
In this chapter you will examine different ideas about the nature of God. In particular you will explore whether God is best thought of as existing in time or outside of time. This investigation will in turn lead you to consider what is meant by the traditional claims that God is all powerful (omnipotent) and all-knowing (omniscient), and whether sense can be made of these terms in today’s world. Finally, you will reflect on the reasons why these ideas about the nature of God are significant to religious believers.
Essential terminology
Omnipotent
Omniscient
Omnibenevolent
Simple
Eternal
Everlasting
Starter
1What is meant by the word ‘God’? Write your answers down individually and then share them with someone else.
2If an atheist who has never heard anything about religion asked you to explain what the word ‘God’ means how would you do it?
3Use the terms ‘omnipotent’ and ‘omniscient’ to search for images on a webpage such as What can you learn about the ways in which these words have been interpreted from the images.
THE OCR CHECKLIST
In this chapter you will cover the following aspects of the OCR specification:
1The meaning of the following philosophical terms and the problems related to them:
(a)Eternal;
(b)Omniscient;
(c)Omnipotent;
(d)Omnibenevolent.
2The views of Boethius concerning eternity and God’s foreknowledge from The Consolation of Philosophy and the strengths and weaknesses of these views.
3Whether or not a good God should reward and punish.
Introduction: What is God?
This question has perplexed people for thousand of years and philosophers and theologians have spilt much ink trying to answer it, or in some cases, explaining why the question is unanswerable.
Thischapter explores the way in which philosophers in the Christian tradition have traditionally answered this question. It is very important to distinguish the aims of philosophers from those of religious believers.A religious believer’s concern is to use language that communicates the reality of their experience of God and relationshipwith God. On the other hand, a philosopher’s concern is to provide a logically coherent account of what a believer means when they use the word God – philosophers and religious people both talk about God but what they are trying to say about God may differ.
THOUGHT POINT
Hymns about God
Study the extract from a traditional Christian hymn. What do you learn about God’s nature from it?
Immortal, invisible God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise.
W. Chalmers Smith (1825-1908)
If you would like to hear the music that accompanies this hymn go to:
The traditional definition of God
The traditional definition of God centres upon five key concepts:
1Simplicity
2Eternity
3Omniscience
4Omnipotence
5Omnibenevolence
This chapter explores the first four terms in this list. Term 5, omnibenevolence, is considered in relation to the problem of evil in the chapter on that topic.
For the OCR syllabus you need to be able to explain and assess terms 2-5 on the list. However, it is essential that you understand term one in the list if you are to understand many of the other terms, particularly ‘eternity’.
GOD’S SIMPLICITY
Simple
What is meant by the word ‘simple’? Ask someone and then look up the different meanings of the word ‘simple’ in a dictionary. Which meaning do you think is important to philosophers?
Also, in the American TV series the Lone Ranger what is the name of the Lone Ranger’s side-kick? Why is this name controversial today?
Christian philosophers use the word ‘simple’ as a description of God. By ‘simple’philosophers are referring to the traditional way in which God was thought of as not being changeable and not having parts or characteristics.
When we talk about people we tend to talk about their characteristics - like eye colour or hairstyle; their mannerisms - a nervous tick; - or their character – happy sad etc. Describing a person involves describing the different aspects of what makes them them.
When philosophers talk about Godbeing simple they are saying that God does not consist of parts or characteristics. Augustine commented that God is unchangeable and thus cannot lose or gain any characteristics. Aquinas spoke of God being simple as God signifies ‘being/existing’. By saying that God is ‘simple’ philosophers are saying that:
1God is God
God cannot be broken down or explained in terms of parts. Philosophers like Aquinas say that God’s nature (what God is) and God’s existence are the same thing because to talkof God is to talk of a being that exists. Hence in the Ontologicalargument Anselm claims that existence is a predicate of God.
Thomas Aquinas stated that God is not a kind of thing. Brian Davies (An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, 2003) explains this suggesting that God is not a thing like ‘a human being’ but God is a thing in the same sense as you might talk about ‘the human race’ as one whole
2God is unchanging
God is unchanging because change involves a movement from being one thing to being another. Because God is perfect, God lacks nothing and is not capable of changing into something else and remaining perfect.
Second, and perhaps more significantly, Christian philosophers have argued that only something unchanging can logically be the cause of the created world that changes. The reason for this claim, as stated by Brian Davies (2003), is:
If something changeable accounted for there being a world in which change occurs, it would be part of such a world and could not, therefore, account for it.
In other words Davies is claiming that anything that changes is part of the world and not distinct from it, as God is.
3Finally, if God is immaterial as argued by Aquinas and many other philosophersGod does not have a body which has characteristics. God simply is God.
Why does the simplicity of God matter?
The simplicity of God matters because it is the implication of any understanding of God’s nature that claims that God is not physical.
Thought Point
Odd ones out
Consider what you know about the philosophy of the following thinkers and look up the key ideas of any of these people that you have not heard of. Which ones are the odd ones out regarding God’s simplicity? Can you deduce why they are the odd ones out?
Augustine; Anselm; Aquinas; Avicenna; Averroes; Boethius; Hume; Jantzen; Maimonides; Swinburne.
See Simplicity Criticisms table
GOD’S ETERNITY
To some people today it is perhaps curious that so much attention has been paid by philosophers to the concept of God’s eternity.The idea of God being eternal is hinted at in a fewBiblical passages such as:
For thus says the high and lofty one
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: (Isaiah 57:15a)
It has also been strongly influenced by classical philosophy (particularly Plato) and his unchanging true reality of the world of Forms, and the later philosophy of Boethius.
Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480–c. 524)
Boethius was an early Christian Philosopher. He was born to an influentialRoman family and eventually became a Roman Consul. In later life he was imprisoned and eventually executed for opposing emperor Theodoric the Great. Boethius is most famous as a Christian philosopher but he also studied the classical Greek Philosophers and was responsible for producing translations of Aristotle’s Organon (Logic) that were used for the next 700 years. In his work he introduced and integrated aspects of Greek philosophy with Christian teaching. He is buried in a tomb in Pavia, Italy.
However, Nicholas Wolterstroff (1975) has suggested that the eternity of Godhas appealed to peoplenot just because of the influence of classical Greek philosophybut also because the eternal Godis different from human’s experience of life in the physical world:
the feeling, deep seated in much of human culture, that the flowing of events into the an irrecoverable and unchangeable past is a matter of deep regret. Our bright actions and shining moments do not long endure. The gnawing of time bites all. And our evil deeds can never be undone. They are forever to be regretted… regrets over the pervasive pattern of what transpires within time have led whole societies to place the divine outside of time – freed from the bondage of temporality.
(Wolterstorff (1975) ‘God Everlasting’)
In today’s world people try to stave off aging and the effects of time, but it remains a fact of life that the past flows by and while it can be regretted it can no longer be changed. We live in the present moment and our experiences are our reality. In a world before the discovery of antibiotics and modern medical care, wheredeath was a much more prominent feature of life, the notion of the world as a place of change and loss most have been most poignant. In this world the notion of God being other and always existing, as revealed in the Bible, leads to the philosophical understanding of God’s nature as eternal and makes believers’ conviction that God is eternal more understandable .
In Judaeo-Christian philosophy the concept of God being eternal can have two senses:
1Eternal refers to God existing outside of time.
2Eternal refers to God having no beginning and no end, but time does pass for God.
In this chapter the word ‘Eternal’ will be used to refer to Godexisting outside of time and the word ‘Everlasting’ to refer to God always existing but with time passing for God.
The Eternal God
Christians since the time of Boethius have thought of God as Eternal. Philosophers such as Aquinas and Anselm have suggested that God exists outside of time. Anselm argued that God is eternal because nothing can contain God (Proslogion 19). For Thomas Aquinas time and change are inseparable; since God cannot change, so God cannot be in time.
Six main reasons can be indentified to explain why Christians traditionally believe that God is eternal:
1The Bible suggests that God is always exists.
2God is not a physical being like us.
3God is the Creator of the universe. Time passing is a feature of the universe. God as the Creator of the universe is therefore outside of time.
4God is the ultimate cause of why things exist and why there is change in the universe. This relates to Thomas Aquinas’ first two Ways.
5God is perfect and hence is not subject to time because time passing implies imperfection. When time passes you change and lose what you were previously. This argument is found in Anselm’s Proslogion.
6God exists necessarily (See Aquinas’ third Way to demonstrate the existence of God).
Boethiusand Aquinas on God’s Eternity
The Christian belief that God is Eternal was strongly influenced by the philosophy of Boethius. Boethius argued that God is changeless (impassable) and does not exist in time. According to Boethius eternity is ‘the whole, simultaneousand perfect possession of unending life’. What Boethius is saying is that life is not only endlessbut that it is not like physical life as it does not involve change and as it does not involve experiencing life as a series of events one following another.
Thought Point
Boethius refer to ‘the infinity of time’ being simultaneously present to God. Boethius stated that:
Eternity, then, is the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of boundless life, which becomes clearer by comparison with temporal things. For whatever lives in time proceeds in the present from the past into the future, and there is nothing established in time which can embrace the whole space of its life equally, but tomorrow it does not yet grasp, while yesterday it has already lost. . And in this day to day life you live no more than in that moving and transitory moment. Therefore whatever endures the condition of time, although as Aristotle thought concerning the world, it neither began ever to be nor ceases to be and although its life is drawn out with the infinity of time, yet it is not yet such that it may rightly be believed eternal. For it does not simultaneously comprehend and embrace the whole space of its life, though it be infinite, but possess the future not yet, the past no longer. Whatever therefore comprehends and possessat once the whole fullness of boundless life, and is such that neither is anything future lacking from it, …must necessarily both always be present to itself, possessing itself in the present, and hold as present the infinity of moving time.
(Boethius Consolation of Philosophy)
1Identify the key points about God’s eternity that are made in this passage.
2Can you think of any philosophical problems raised by what Boethius states?
As indicated in the Thought Point above Boethius’ argued that God’s life is limitless and thatGodpossesses the whole of his/her life eternally without end. For God there is no past, present and future. Instead,Godexists eternally and all of time is present to God at the same time. God does not see the future as it happens; instead Boethius argues that all time is present to God ‘simultaneously’. One way to imagine this is to think of a film you know well. When you watch the film you start at the beginning and the film flows on from beginning to end. However, Boethius argues that if time is like the film God takes in all the film in ‘one glance’ – all at the same time – the opening title through to the closing credits. The reason that Boethius believes that God is eternal is because God is simple and hence does not learn new things and time does not pass for God:
And God possesses this present instant comprehension of and sight of all things not from the issuing of future events but from his own simplicity.
(Boethius Consolation of Philosophy)
ThomasAquinas, quoting Boethius, stated that:
Eternity is simultaneously whole, while time is not, eternity measuring abiding existence and time measuring change… the primary intrinsic difference of time from eternity is that eternity exists as a simultaneous whole and time does not
(Thomas Aquinas: SelectedPhilosophical Writings)
For Aquinas God exists unendingly without a beginning or conclusion. Hence, God must exist outside of time because time consists of partsand the notion of time involves beginnings and ends. For example, all human beings are born, live their lives and die; for Aquinas God is the Creator of the universe and all life who always exists without end. Time does not pass for God. Second,Aquinas, like Boethius, states that time involves living life ‘successively’. By this they mean that one event in life follows another, but for God this is not thecase. God exists outside of time and the nature of God is to exist.
Some Implications of the Eternal View of God
1Implications for Religious Language
God can only be discussed in analogical terms or in terms of a via negativa, symbols or myths. Thomas Aquinas went as far as to say that any discussion of the nature of God, such as of God’s eternity, ultimately indicates something about what God is (using analogical language) and stateswhat God is not (a via negativa). If God is outside of time God is transcendent and beyond human understanding.
2God the Creator
As God cannot change God is eternally the Creator, God does not think about creating and then create. Instead it is God’s nature to be the Creator. ThomasAquinasstated that God knows all of Creation precisely because God is eternally the Creator and sustains Creation in existence. In this sense all of Creation is a work of God
See Criticisms of the Eternal God table
THE EVERLASTING GOD
One solution to the problems raised by claims that God is eternal has been tosuggest that God is everlasting. By ‘everlasting’theologians mean that God always exists and will exist without end, however, time passes for God.
Richard Swinburne supports the view that God is everlasting. He argues that the idea of events occurring simultaneously to God cannot be made sense of. Second, he suggests that belief in an everlasting God fits more satisfactorily with God as revealed in the Bible:
For myself I cannot make much sense of this [all events being simultaneously present to God] suggestion – for many reasons. For example, I cannot see that anything can be meant by saying that God knows (as they happen) the events of AD 1995 unless it means that he exists in 1995 and knows in 1995 what is happening then… hence I prefer that understanding of God being eternal as his being everlasting rather than as his being timeless.
(Swinburne, R.,Is there a God?)
It is important to note that saying God is everlasting is not meant to indicate any lessening of the power of God – it is a statement that God exists without end at all points in time but not that God exists timelessly in the sense of Aquinas and Boethius.