Abstract
Surely God, as a perfectly rational being, created the universe for some reason. But is God’s creating the universe for a reason compatible with divine impassibility? That is the question I investigate in this article. The prima facie tension between impassibility and God’s creating for a reason arises from impassibility’s commitment to God being uninfluenced by anything ad extra. If God is uninfluenced in this way, asks the detractor, how could he be moved to create anything at all? This prima facie tension has recently been formalized and dubbed the ‘Problem of Arbitrary Creation’. In this article, I defend a new extension of this problem. I begin by characterizing classical theism, divine simplicity, and divine impassibility. I then spell out the Problem of Arbitrary Creation as developed by R. T. Mullins. I next raise a worry for Mullins’ version of the argument. Finally, I extend the argument and show how my extension avoids the aforementioned worry.
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Notes
Rice (2016, p. 258), Bavinck (1979, pp. 234–235), Strong (1907, p. 404), and Pruss (2017, pp. 213–214). An important note is in order concerning this commitment to God’s perfect rationality. Mullins spells out the commitment as involving the claim that God always acts for a reason (2020b, p. 394). But one might worry: could God not perform arbitrary acts? Swinburne, for instance, has plausible cases in which God may will X or not-X without having an overriding reason to will the one rather than the other. (Indeed, this is one of his theses in Swinburne (2019). Arguably, God created me but could have created a different being indistinguishable from me.) For instance, if God creates a cosmos with sub-atomic parts, must there be a reason that there are n such parts rather than (n + 1)? Few follow Leibniz on this. This worry is valuable, and it invites a helpful clarification. Mullins’ PAC (as well as my new, to-be-articulated extension of PAC) only requires that when God performs some act A, he has some reason to A; it does not require that God has overriding reason to perform A rather than some alternative act. This allows God to perform ‘arbitrary’ acts in the sense of acts each of which he has reason to perform but none of which he has overriding reason to perform. In that sense, God has no reason to perform one rather than another of those actions. But each action is still such that God has some reason to perform it (though not overriding reason). And this, importantly, is all that Mullins’ PAC (and my new extension thereof) requires. Thanks to an anonymous referee for bringing this worry to my attention.
Two notes. First, a positive ontological item is anything that exists (has being or reality). Second, what intrinsicality consists in is a matter of debate. We can make do with an intuitive understanding thereof, since nothing in my paper hangs on a precise and formalized account. I follow David Lewis’s classic articulation: ‘We distinguish intrinsic properties, which things have in virtue of the way they themselves are, from extrinsic properties, which they have in virtue of their relations or lack of relations to other things’ (Lewis, 1986, p. 61). Intrinsic features (else: predicates), then, characterize something as it is in itself, without reference to things wholly apart from or outside of or disjoint from the thing in question. Extrinsic features (else: predicates), by contrast, characterize something as it is in relation or connection with something wholly apart from or outside it (or as it fails to so relate). For an overview of debates concerning intrinsicality and extrinsicality, see Marshall and Weatherson (2018).
See, among others, Grant (2012, p. 254), Spencer (2017, p. 123), Brower (2009, p. 105), Stump (2013, p. 33), Schmid and Mullins (forthcoming), Leftow (2015, p. 48), Kerr (2019, p. 54), Dolezal (2011, p. xvii), Sijuwade (forthcoming), Schmid (forthcoming), and Grant and Spencer (2015, pp. 5–7).
Nor could it be directed towards the relative goodness or value of the universes that could obtain. For according to Mullins, on classical theism ‘God is the only intrinsically good thing. All other things merely participate in God’s goodness’ (2020b, p. 404). Mark C. Murphy seems explicit on this point too, writing that ‘God cannot create more goodness. Even considered apart from creation, there exists all the goodness that is or ever could be’ (2017, p. 83). Consider also Robert Sokolowski: ‘God is to be so understood, and the world or creatures are to be so understood, that nothing greater, maius, is achieved if the world or creatures are added to God’ (1995, p. 8). Finally, consider Joseph E. Lenow, who writes that ‘had God willed to exist without creation, God would not have willed a lesser goodness than God has willed in creating the world – the same power would have been realized. Similarly, had God willed the creation of a different world, God would not have willed a lesser (or greater) goodness than God has willed in creating this one’ (2021, p. 19).
One proposal Mullins does not consider at this juncture is that while goodness is not necessarily diffusive (which allows the classical theist to avert the necessity of creation), goodness still tends toward diffusivity. I shall not pursue this rejoinder to Mullins beyond this footnote since it is inessential to my extension of the PAC articulated later.
This is not to say that there is no such justification, or that there could not be. Rather, it is simply to make a dialectical point about what has thus far been written on PAC.
The story therefore adopts a powers-based account of the metaphysics of modality along the lines of, e.g., Pruss (2011). Note that God’s being the ground of all possible and actual being is not unique to classical theism; most non-classical theists affirm it as well.
This is compatible with their value being a participation in God’s value, just as creatures’ existence being limited, finite, and imperfect is compatible with their existence being a participation in God’s unlimited, infinite, and perfect existence. Participation need not entail non-uniqueness.
Leibniz’s Law states that for any x and any y, if x and y are identical, then whatever is true of x is true of y (and vice versa).
Another important thing to note: the fact that some things are self-evident does not threaten my point about the irreflexivity of explanation. Self-evidence just means (roughly) that upon understanding something, one thereby understands that it exists (or occurs, or obtains, or is true, or whatever). But this is separate from what explains or accounts for its existence (occurrence, etc.). Moreover, self-evidence is an epistemic or justificatory notion, not a metaphysical one—and when we concern ourselves with explanations of God’s action (in this context), we are concerned not with epistemic or justificatory notions but instead with extramental reality itself—some connection or relation between or among things in reality that accounts for why God’s act of creation is as it is (or accomplishes what it accomplishes).
Aquinas (n.d.-a, n.d.-c), for instance, explicitly denies that the divine substance can be essentially referred to other things—cf. Summa Contra Gentiles II, ch. 12, and De Potentia Q7, A8. (And note that we are talking about, in the main text, an intrinsic directedness-toward and referral-to. And whatever is intrinsic to God is essential to God, under DDS.)
Thanks to an anonymous referee for bringing this objection to my attention. For more on Platonism within the Christian tradition, see Hampton and Kenney (2020).
See also Grant (2019, ch. 1), Kerr (2019, p. 15), Leftow (2012, p. 20), and Schmid and Mullins (forthcoming).
Nor can there be dependent but necessarily existent abstracta under classical theism. For God, under the version of classical theism with which I am concerned, is free to create or refrain from creating. Hence, anything distinct from God could fail to exist—it is contingent. On this commitment to God’s freedom, see Pruss (2017, pp. 213–214).
I leave open whether this move successfully averts Mullins’ PAC. Mullins is especially concerned with God’s act being based on things ad extra. But the forms as items within the divine mind would allow God’s act to be based on things ad intra. So the objection might neutralize Mullins’ PAC. Again, I leave this open—my thesis is not that Mullins’ PAC succeeds or circumvents this objection.
Many thanks to two anonymous referees for helpful feedback.
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Schmid, J.C. Classical Theism, Arbitrary Creation, and Reason-Based Action. SOPHIA 61, 565–579 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00895-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00895-9