God and Necessity

588 Pages·2015·2.266 MB·English

by  Brian Leftow

God and Necessity
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God and Necessity
BRIAN LEFTOW
1
3
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For Dick Trammell, who got me started, and for my parents
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PREFACE
This book provides a metaphysic of modality in which God plays the chief
part; to locate my position, start at Aquinas and take a half-step toward
Descartes. I am writing for theist analytic philosophers, atheist analytic
philosophers, and (optimistically) some theologians. Theist analytic philoso-
phersmayseeatoncewhymyprojectisworththeirtime.Ifyoufallintothis
campbutdonotseeit,theIntroductionandChapters2–4willtrytoconvince
you.Ioffer threethingstohook atheists’attention:achancetobashtheism,
(partof)anewsortofargumentforGod’sexistence,andwhatIhopeissome
decentmetaphysicsthatisdetachablefromthetheisticcontext.Thechanceto
bash arises from the Introduction and first four chapters, which argue that
theism brings with it commitment to a particular sort of metaphysics of
modality. Here, then, is your chance: theists should believe that, and that,
youmaywanttoargue,isabsurd.Buttoseewhetheritreallyis,youwillhave
to go on and consider the theory I offer. The argument for God’s existence
arisesoutofthetheory,andsoifyouwanttoconsiderthat,again,therestof
thebookwillhaveapointforyou.Thedetachablemetaphysicscropsuphere
and there throughout, but particularly in Chapters 13 and 16. As to theolo-
gians—well,foralotofthemthisbookwillbeasteephilltoclimb.ButIhope
I have things to say about the doctrine of Creation in the Introduction and
Chapters 1–4 that may repay their attention. In Chapter 7 there are what
amount to a priori arguments for monotheism that may also be of interest.
Doctrinesofdivineideashavealonghistoryintheology,andChapters10–12
offer ananti-Platonistonethat may striketheirfancies. Andagain, theymay
want to make the effort to get through the book to see if the sort of
commitmentI make about Creation reallycan be sustained.
Every project starts somewhere. I present a realist account of modality;
while I have some things to say against some forms of anti-realism, full
discussion of such views must wait. For reasons of length I have also sup-
pressed much I would have liked to say about logic, mathematics, and the
history of my topic. Now a word about pronouns. Many philosophers have
takenupusing‘she’asthegenericthird-personpronoun.Ihavenot,asIhave
never heard a reason given for this, and it is not the English I learned at my
mother’sknee.Someoscillateinthecourseofapiecebetween‘he’and‘she’.
I have found this distracting as a reader: change of gender suggests that
someone else is in view than was being discussed before. ‘He or she’ will
do, but becomes tiresome when used too often. Mostly I try to avoid the
issue, but I sometimes try second-person constructions: I am addressing my
reader anyway, so why not just do so explicitly, with a friendly ‘you’? Some
viii Preface
contexts,however,requireadifferenttreatment.SometimesIspeakwithwide
third-persongeneralityofaclasstowhichIbelong,whenwhatIreallyhavein
mindismyself,ormyselfasaprimaryexampleoftheclass.Onsuchoccasions
Iamatleastinthefirstinstancetalkingaboutmyself.Iamnotindoubtasto
whether I am he or she, and simply to use ‘she’ would be literary cross-
dressing; I hope readers who avoid the word will excuse my ‘he’. I use
traditional male language to refer to God: if it was good enough for Jesus,
it is good enough for me. I also presume that the human authors of Old
Testament books were male. Given the times and culture, the chance that
they were not is vanishingly small.
Onenicethingaboutprefacesisthechancetosay‘thanks’.Ihavededicated
this volume to my first philosophy teacher, a man into whose classroom
I wandered as a college sophomore—a skinnyguy in a rumpled jacket with
chalk-dust all over and an infectious grin just to the north. We come to see
what our parents did for us when we become parents ourselves: with a 4-4
regular teaching load, he took the time for a senior independent study in
which we hacked over Principia Mathematica together, and I now know how
extraordinary that was. I still remember some of his jokes, and the logic he
taught me; I also remember that first moment when it struck me that it
would be great to love what I did for a living as much as he obviously did.
Thanks, Dick, for my career. To my parents, of course, thanks of a wholly
different sort. At various points my thinking has been supported by faculty
fellowships at Fordham University, the Center for Philosophy of Religion at
the University of Notre Dame, and the Evangelical Scholarship Initiative of
thePewFoundation:toall,mysincerestthanks.Ihavereadpapersonsomeof
this to the American Philosophical Association, the Society of Christian
Philosophers,theBritishSocietyforPhilosophyofReligion,andphilosophical
meetingsatOxford,Cambridge,theUniversityofBirmingham,theUniversity
of Texas at San Antonio, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin,
andQueen’sUniversityBelfast.IalsohadthepleasureofaveryactiveOxford
seminar on the mind of God. The late Phil Quinn, with characteristic
generosity, commented on the whole of an earlier version of the MS, and
Evan Fales and Bill Alston read substantial chunks of it. I have also learned
from reading groups at the Notre Dame Center, and from Jan Cover, Tom
Flint, Hugh McCann, Chris Menzel, Nicholas Nathan, Tim O’Connor, Al
Plantinga,MikeRea,GonzaloRodriguez-Pereyra,LindaZagzebski,andDean
Zimmerman. I also thank the referees for Oxford University Press and some
journals. Conversations on this topic have spanned mycareer, so I am quite
sureIhaveforgottentothank someone;pleasepardonmeif itisyou.Joseph
Jedwab compiled most of the bibliography. Finally, thanks of another sort:
partoftheIntroductionappearedin‘WhyPerfectBeingTheology?’,Interna-
tionalJournalforPhilosophyofReligion69(2011),103–18,andpartsofChapters
5 and 6 in ‘Against Deity Theories’, Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion
Preface ix
2 (2009), 105–60. My thanks to the editors for the reuse of this material, and
also my apologies to readers of the latter: a glitch not caught in the proofs
madegibberishofpartof itsargument.YouwillseeherewhatImeanttosay
there. My thanks to the Editor and Cambridge University Press for permis-
sion to use some of “Swinburne on should be Divine Necessity” (Religious
Studies 46 (2010), pp. 141–2), which appears in chapter 1. This chapter also
drewmaterialfrom“Necessity.”inCharlesTaliaferroandChadMeister,eds,
The Cambridge Companion to Christian Philosophical Theology (Cambridge Uni-
versityPress,2010),pp.15–30,reproducedwithpermission.Someofchapter
6appearedin“AquinasonGodandModalTruth.”ModernSchoolman82(2005),
pp.171–200,andisre-usedbypermission.Someofchapter23appearedin“One
StopTowardGod,”RoyalInstituteofPhilosophySupplement68(2011),pp.67–104,
andisusedbypermission.
Brian Leftow
Oriel College
September 2011