God and Abstract Objects The Coherence of Theism: Aseity

541 Pages·2017·5.01 MB·English

William Lane Craig
God and Abstract
Objects
The Coherence of Theism: Aseity
God and Abstract Objects
William Lane Craig
God and Abstract Objects
The Coherence of Theism: Aseity
William Lane Craig
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University
La Mirada, CA, USA
Houston Baptist University
Houston, TX, USA
ISBN 978-3-319-55383-2 ISBN 978-3-319-55384-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-55384-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017934646
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God sustains in being all intelligible things
as well as all things of a material nature. . . .
He comprehendeth in Himself all of the
intelligible creation, that all things may
remain in existence controlled by His
encompassing power. . . . Does what has
been said leave us any longer in ignorance of
Him who is ‘God over all’?
Gregory of Nyssa Against Eunomius II.11
For Robert Adams
With gratitude for your work and example
Preface
This book is the third installment of a long-range research program on the coher-
ence of theism, that is to say, a systematic philosophical analysis of the principal
attributes of God according to classical theism. My first two volumes explored the
divine attributes of omniscience and eternity, respectively. This third volume exam-
ines God’s attribute of aseity or self-existence. God is traditionally conceived to
exist not merely necessarily but independently of anything else and to be the Creator
of everything apart from Himself. The chief challenge to the doctrine of divine
aseity issues from contemporary Platonism, which holds that there are objects, such
as numbers and other mathematical objects, which exist necessarily and indepen-
dently, so that God is not the sole ultimate reality.
I first became aware of the challenge posed by Platonism to classical theism at a
meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers in Milwaukee in 1982, where I
heard Thomas Morris present his remarkable paper “Absolute Creation.” Although
my previous forays into set theory and philosophy of mathematics had made me
sceptical of the reality of abstract mathematical objects, I had never before appreci-
ated how Platonism struck at the very heart of theism. Moreover, Morris’ own solu-
tion to the challenge posed by abstract objects to divine aseity seemed to involve a
vicious circularity, which, in my opinion, he struggled vainly to elude. Clearly, here
was a powerful challenge to the coherence of classical theism that I did not know
how to resolve. I put the issue on the back burner until my studies of divine omni-
science and divine eternity were complete and then took up the challenge in
earnest.
Vaguely aware of the tradition of divine conceptualism in Christian theology, I
initially anticipated that I would eventually articulate some sort of conceptualist
solution to Platonism’s challenge. What caught me by surprise was the discovery of
the rich cornucopia of anti-realist solutions to the problem. Contemporary Christian
philosophers are to all appearances largely unfamiliar with these options, so that
such viewpoints are virtually never discussed in any depth by writers on divine
aseity. Moreover, these views are often conflated in the literature, and no standard
nomenclature exists for all of these views. This makes it difficult even to discern
clearly the array of options available. Philosophers working in philosophy of
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x Preface
mathematics, the field where the debate over abstract objects is most vigorously
pursued, almost never consider integrating theism into their respective views on
mathematical objects, making the task of theological integration especially chal-
lenging. As my study proceeded, I found myself increasingly attracted to anti-realist
perspectives on abstract objects, relative to which the challenge to divine aseity
simply evaporates or, rather, never appears. I hope in this study to lay out a range of
viable options for the classical theist who is seeking to find a solution to Platonism’s
challenge.
One drawback of the embarrassment of riches available for responding to
Platonism’s challenge is that I often find it necessary to mention various alternative
viewpoints before those views have been properly introduced. This practice may be
unenlightening to the reader not already familiar with these views. My best solution
to this problem is the perhaps brazen suggestion that the reader, after completing the
book, reread the earlier chapters in light of newly acquired knowledge of the alter-
native views.
I have profited from personal discussion or correspondence with many thinkers
in the pursuit of this study, among whom I wish to thank in particular for their
stimulus and input: Robert Adams, Jody Azzouni, Mark Balaguer, J. T. Bridges,
Jeffrey Brower, Charles Chihara, Paul Copan, Thomas Crisp, Trent Dougherty,
Mark Edwards, Thomas Flint, Paul Gould, Dorothy Grover, Geoffrey Hellman, Paul
Horwich, Ross Inman, Peter van Inwagen, Dennis Jowers, Brian Leftow, Mary
Leng, Christopher Menzel, J. P. Moreland, Thomas Morris, Kenneth Perszyk,
Michael Rea, Maria Reicher-Marek, Theodore Sider, Peter Simons, Alvin Plantinga,
Joshua Rasmussen, Elliott Sober, Robert Thomas, Achille Varzi, Greg Welty,
Edward Wierenga, Dallas Willard, Stephen Yablo, Takashi Yagisawa, and Dean
Zimmerman.
Thanks are due as well to my research assistant Timothy Bayless for procuring
research materials, hunting down references, compiling the bibliography, compiling
the indices, and carrying out other related tasks for me. Finally, as always, I am
grateful to my wife Jan, not only for her help with early portions of the typescript
but even more for her encouragement and interaction.
I have presented portions of my research at meetings of the Society of Biblical
Literature, the Society for Philosophy of Religion, the Society of Christian
Philosophers, the C. S. Lewis Society (Oxford), the Evangelical Philosophical
Society, the American Philosophical Association (Central Division), and the
Österreichische Gesellschaft für Religionsphilosophie and at philosophical collo-
quia at Texas A&M University, Rutgers University, and Southern Evangelical
Seminary. Earlier versions of my work on the topic of God and abstract objects have
been published as “Why Are (Some) Platonists So Insouciant?” Philosophy 86
(2011): 213–29; “A Nominalist Perspective on God and Abstract Objects,”
Philosophia Christi 13 (2011): 305–18; “God and Abstract Objects,” in The
Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, ed. Alan Padgett and James
Stump (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 441–52; “Nominalism and Divine
Aseity,” Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 4 (2012): 43–64; “Propositional
Truth—Who Needs It?” Philosophia Christi 15 (2013): 355–64; “Peter van
Preface xi
Inwagen, Substitutional Quantification, and Ontological Commitment,” Notre
Dame Journal of Formal Logic 55 (2014): 553–561; “Divine Self-Existence,” in
Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, ed. Daniel D. Novotný and Lukáš
Novák (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 269–95; “Divine Aseity and Abstract
Objects,” in Christian Philosophy of Religion: Essays in Honor of Stephen T. Davis,
ed. C. P. Ruloff (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), pp. 165–
201; and “God and Abstract Objects,” Philosophia Christi 17 (2015): 269–76. I am
grateful for permissions where required.
In the spring of 2015, I had the honor of delivering a semipopular distillation of
the material of this book as the Cadbury Lectures at the University of Birmingham,
UK. An expansion of these lectures has now been published by Oxford University
Press as God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism (2016). The
present book offers a more detailed and technical discussion of the issues surveyed
there.
Atlanta, Georgia, USA William Lane Craig
Contents
Part I The Problematic
1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 3
Divine Aseity............................................................................................. 3
Abstract and Concrete Objects .................................................................. 6
Heavyweight and Lightweight Platonism ................................................. 13
Peter van Inwagen ................................................................................. 14
Bob Hale and Crispin Wright ................................................................ 15
Michael Dummett ................................................................................. 21
John Burgess and Gideon Rosen ........................................................... 24
Concluding Reflections ............................................................................. 26
Bibliography ............................................................................................. 29
2 Theology Proper and Abstract Objects ................................................ 33
Biblical and Patristic Witness to Divine Aseity ........................................ 33
The Witness of John and Paul ............................................................... 33
The Witness of the Church Fathers ....................................................... 57
Perfect Being Theology ............................................................................ 70
Conclusion ................................................................................................ 72
Bibliography ............................................................................................. 72
3 The Indispensability Argument for Platonism ..................................... 77
Quine’s Indispensability Argument ........................................................... 79
Naturalism ............................................................................................. 80
The Indispensability Thesis .................................................................. 87
The Criterion of Ontological Commitment ........................................... 95
Confirmational Holism.......................................................................... 104
Conclusion and Transition ........................................................................ 107
Bibliography ............................................................................................. 115
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