THE RATIO DEI AND THE AMBIGUITIES OF HISTORY

The Radical Orthodoxy movement has revived postmodern theology's interest in John Duns Scotus. This article reviews Catherine Pickstock's substantial contribution to this discussion and the several articles that engage Pickstock in this same issue. The article notes two lines of engagement: the first, more analytical line considers the logic of "God-talk," the ratio Dei , to consider whether Scotus's doctrine of univocity is adequate to speak of divine transcendence. The second is more historical and asks whether Radical Orthodoxy's historical genealogy offers a sufficiently generous account of the plurality and ambiguity of the history of the church.     

Transcendental being: Scotus and Scotists

Of singular importance to the medieval theory of transcendentals was the position of John Duns Scotus that there could be a concept of being univocally common, not only to substance and accidents, but even to God and creatures. Scotus's doctrine of univocal transcendental concepts violated the accepted view that, owing to its generality, no transcendental notion could be univocal. The major difficulty facing Scotus's doctrine of univocity was to explain how a real, as opposed to a purely logical, concept could be abstracted from what agreed in nothing real, in this case, God and creatures. The present article examines Scotus's solution to this difficulty and its interpretation in four of his noted fourteenth-century followers. It is shown that the balance Scotus's solution achieved between the competing demands of the real diversity between God and creatures, on the one side, and the conceptual unity of transcendental being, on the other, is taken in opposed directions by his interpreters. Either the real diversity of God and creatures is given priority, so that the concept of being becomes a purely logical notion, or the real unity of the concept of being is stressed, so that some sort of real community is posited between God and creatures.In the following notes,Lect. andOrd. are abbreviations forLectura andOrdinatio, the titles of Scotus's earlier and later versions of his Oxford commentary on theSentences, respectively.     

Prophets against Ockhamism. Or: why the hard fact/soft fact distinction is irrelevant to the problem of foreknowledge

In this paper, a cognate of the problem of divine foreknowledge is introduced: the problem of the prophet’s foreknowledge. The latter cannot be solved referring to Ockhamism—the doctrine that divine foreknowledge could, at least in principle, be compatible with human freedom because God’s beliefs about future actions are merely soft facts, rather than hard facts about the past. Under the assumption that if Ockhamism can solve the problem of divine foreknowledge then it should also yield a solution to the problem of the prophet’s foreknowledge, it is concluded that Ockhamism fails.     

Plotinus on Divine Simplicity

Gavrilyuk attends to divine simplicity according to the third‐century AD pagan philosopher Plotinus. He shows that Plotinus draws his doctrine of divine simplicity from the earlier Greco‐Roman philosophical tradition, in which the nature of the “first principle” was highly contested. Aristotle offers a history of the early debate, with Anaxagoras being the first to glimpse the first principle’s simplicity. The Platonist philosophers conceived of the first principle as incorporeal, and on these grounds linked the first principle to simplicity. For his part, Aristotle associated simplicity with the absoluteness of pure actuality. The Stoics, with their essentially material understanding of the divine, ignored or denied divine simplicity. Plotinus draws upon the reception of Aristotle that is found in Alexander of Aphrodisias, Numenius, and Ammonius. According to Gavrilyuk, the signal contribution of Plotinus consists in setting forth the strongest possible doctrine of divine simplicity. Indeed, for Plotinus God’s utter simplicity means that God cannot even be thought, because thinking requires the duality of subject‐object. Plotinus conceives of the divine One as above divine Mind (nous), since the latter contains a unified plurality but not the perfect simplicity that marks the unknowable One. Gavilyuk ends his essay with an account of the qualifications made to divine simplicity by philosophers and theologians who are less radical in their doctrine than is Plotinus. He emphasizes that the Enneads’s key metaphysical insight, utterly ruling out any kind of composition from the One, has the benefit of being supremely intellectually coherent and elegant.     

Can Western Monotheism Avoid Substance Dualism?

The problem of divine agency and action is analogous to the problem of human agency and action: How is such agency possible in the absence of a dualistic causal interaction between disparate orders of being? This paper explores nondualistic accounts of divine agency that assert the following: (1) physical monism, (2) antireductionism, (3) physical realization, and (4) divine causal realism. I conclude that a robustly causal deity is incompatible with nonddualism's affirmation of physical monism. Specifically, I argue the incoherence of nondualistic strategies that advocate divine information transfer without energy transfer or the divine downward causation of physical events. Furthermore, I claim that the principle of explanatory exclusion makes any nondualistic, noninterventionist account of divine agency highly dubious. Finally, I suggest that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can avoid a causally inert deity only if they are willing to deny the current presumption of the causal closure of the physical.     

The Rise of Sympathy and the Question of Divine Suffering

Seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth, writing just at the time when the concept of sympathy was moving from the realm of magic to that of ethics, argued that God must be understood as having a vital sympathy with suffering human beings. Yet while Cudworth invoked sympathy in an attempt to capture God's intimate relation with creation, in fact, it served as a principle of mediation that tended either to collapse God into the world or to distance God from the world. The broader implications of this problematic conception of divine transcendence can be seen in the secularizing tendencies within sentimentalist ethics and in the work of the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Anglican theologians, who were the first to affirm divine passibility.     

Ability,Foreknowledge, and Explanatory Dependence

Many philosophers maintain that the ability to do otherwise is compatible with comprehensive divine foreknowledge but incompatible with the truth of causal determinism. But the Fixity of the Past principle underlying the rejection of compatibilism about the ability to do otherwise and determinism appears to generate an argument also for the incompatibility of the ability to do otherwise and divine foreknowledge. By developing an account of ability that appeals to the notion of explanatory dependence, we can replace the Fixity of the Past with a principle that does not generate this difficulty. I develop such an account and defend it from objections. I also explore some of the account's implications, including whether the account is consistent with presentism.     

A Jewish Modified Divine Command Theory

We claim that divine command metaethicists have not thought through the nature of the expression of divine love with sufficient rigor. We argue, against prior divine command theories, that the radical difference between God and the natural world means that grounding divine command in divine love can only ground a formal claim of the divine on the human; recipients of revelation must construct particular commands out of this formal claim. While some metaethicists might respond to us by claiming that this account leads to an inability to judge between better and worse constructions of the commanded life, we propose that an analysis of the human response to divine love—theological eros—can be the basis for an articulation of a philosophical theology (in our case, negative theology) that can guide the religious believer toward generating particular principles for ethical action that are grounded in an account of divine action. By linking divine command to imitatio Dei, the believer can have confidence that her imitative acts of God are not inaccurate constructions of the commanded life.     

道德与自然:"形上之道"与"形而上学"的本质区别

在中国传统“形上之道”与西方“Metaphysics（形而上学）”两者都是对超经验的形上事物的研究,但是也存在着根本的不可通约的区别：“形而上学”是着眼于从认识论求“真”的角度来研究的关于自然本体论的“知识”,即“自然形而上学”;而中国的“形上之道”更多地表现为求“善”的内心体验式的对道德境界的追求和精神寄托,即“道德形而上学”。产生区别的内在原因是传统西方以“主客两分”为特征的理性传统与传统中国以“天人合一”为特征的德性传统的不同。     

Divine Command Theory and Theistic Activism

If the divine will is not subject to any principle, and God controls all truths including moral truths, morality will be arbitrary at the deepest level. It will not be possible to offer any explanation of why God has willed certain actions rather than their contraries. Throughout the history of philosophical debate there have been many attempts to support the dependence of moral truths on God's command (or divine command theory) and at the same time to avoid this charge of arbitrariness. In the West, one such an attempt has been made by Thomas V. Morris and Christopher Menzel ( 1986 , hereafter M&M), who refer to their position as theistic activism. In this paper I will discuss their view and argue that: 1) their position does not satisfy the requirements of divine freedom, and that 2) to regard moral truths as necessary and unalterable is not adequate.     

ECONOMY OF THE GIFT: RETHINKING THE ROLE OF LAND ENCLOSURE IN POLITICAL ECONOMY*

The theological revivification of the concept of gift and gift exchange in the last two decades has provoked questions on how notions of divine superabundance can be translated into economics. In this article, I relate the thinking of Paul Ricoeur, John Milbank, Philip Goodchild and Albino Barrera to a specific economic reform that entails seeing land enclosure as inimical to the stability and fairness of an economy. I refer to the political economy of Henry George (1839–97) which takes land value taxation to be its centrally defining principle for a just economy.     

God,Information, and Complexity: From Descriptive to Explorative Metaphysics

Abstract

Information and complexity have become central concepts in our contemporary worldview. On this background, it is discussed in which sense concepts of information and complexity may apply to theology proper. While the inherited axiom of divine simplicity forbids complexity and plurality as features of divine nature, an argument is developed for the presence of information and complexity in divine life. Three forms of information are proposed as relevant for a contemporary concept of God: Information as difference (Information1), information as form and relational structure (Information2) and semantic information (Information3). It is argued that features of these forms of information must be internal to divine life, if God can properly be said to facilitate and value the complex world of creation, to allow embodied creates to participate in divine life, and to communicate with creatures. In this light, the notion of divine simplicity will have to be redefined as the divine self-identity throughout temporal flux.     

THE DOCTRINE OF UNIVOCITY IS TRUE AND SALUTARY

After clearing up some misunderstandings of Scotus's doctrine of univocity, I argue that the doctrine of univocity is true. All predications about God must be reducible to univocity if they are to be intelligible at all. So even if the doctrine has unwelcome consequences, we ought to affirm it anyway; it is not the job of the theologian or philosopher to shrink from uncomfortable truths. I then argue that the doctrine of univocity in fact has no unwelcome consequences. Moreover, it has at least two salutary logical consequences of the highest importance. I conclude that the polemic against univocity, and against Scotus as its defender, is misplaced.     

The deadlock of absolute divine simplicity

In this article, I explain how and why different attempts to defend absolute divine simplicity fail. A proponent of absolute divine simplicity has to explain why different attributions do not suppose a metaphysical complexity in God but just one superproperty, why there is no difference between God and His super-property and finally how a absolute simple entity can be the truthmaker of different intrinsic predications. It does not necessarily lead to a rejection of divine simplicity but it shows that we may consider another conception of divine simplicity compatible with some metaphysical complexity in God.     

COSMOLOGY FROM ALPHA TO OMEGA: RESPONSE TO REVIEWS

I gratefully acknowledge and respond here to four reviews of my recent book, Cosmology from Alpha to Omega. Nancey Murphy stresses the importance of showing consistency between Christian theology and natural science through a detailed examination of my recent model of their creative interaction. She suggests how this model can be enhanced by adopting Alasdair MacIntyre's understanding of tradition in order to adjudicate between competing ways of incorporating science into a wider worldview. She urges the inclusion of ethics in my model and predicts that this would successfully challenge the competing naturalist tradition in contemporary society. John F. Haught weighs the alternatives of viewing divine action as objective versus subjective and of divine action at one level in nature or at all levels. He asks whether physics is fundamental to nature, arguing instead that metaphysics should be considered as fundamental. Michael Ruse assesses occasional versus universal divine action, the problems raised to divine action when it is related to quantum mechanics, and the way these relations exacerbate the challenge of natural theodicy. As an alternative he suggests viewing God as outside time and acting through unbroken natural law. Willem B. Drees discusses my use of the bridge metaphor for the relation between theology and science, the implications when science is inspired by theology, the role of contingency and necessity in the anthropic principle/many-worlds debate, and the challenge of cosmology to eschatology with the ensuing problem of theodicy.     

THE NATURE OF DIVINE REVELATION

One of the most important questions about divine revelation is the question – what is the nature of divine revelation? This conceptual question even precedes such epistemological questions as whether we can know that a divine revelation occurred, or whether divine revelation can produce religious knowledge. In this paper, I argue for a particular analysis of the concept of divine revelation. Key to my proposal is that ‘to reveal’ is a term of epistemic appraisal: if a subject revealed a proposition to a receiver, then this implies that the receiver actually accepted the information offered. I will end this paper by investigating what the consequences of my proposal are for answering the two epistemological questions.     

The Devil's Dilemma in Flaubert' Saint Antony

In La Téntation de Saint Antoine Gustave Flaubert dramatizes a philosophical exchange about the nature of divine providence and the efficacy of petitionary prayer. The Devil and Antony consider the question of whether God can be called upon for relief from suffering. The Saint assumes as popular religion teaches that it is possible to ask for God's help in emergency situations, while the Devil poses a dilemma to challenge Antony's faith. The Devil seeks to expose contradictions in some of the beliefs Antony holds about God's infinite perfection. The Devil's argument purports to prove that God is not a person, and that for this reason God is inaccessible to human interaction. The Devil's dilemma is supposed to be this:
(1) If God as an infinitely perfect being created the universe, then divine providence is not needed [does not exist].
(2) If divine providence is needed [exists], then the universe is defective [not the creation of God as an infinitely perfect being].
Although these look at first to be the opposite poles of an excluded middle, propositions (1) and (2) are mere contrapositives. Since the Devil's propositions (1) and (2) are logically equivalent, the Devil can only proceed to the conclusion that God does not exist or that divine providence is not needed or does not exist paradoxically by assuming that God exists or that divine providence is needed or exists. Yet if divine providence is needed or exists, then God exists as its divine source. If the Devil is supposed to succeed by logic, his dilemma as Flaubert portrays it is powerless to prove that the only reasonable religious attitude is an impassionate metaphysical acknowledgement of the existence of an impersonal infinitely perfect Substance, which is absolute unchanging unmoveable Being.     

Divine determinism,human freedom,and the consequence argument

In this paper I consider the view, held by some Thomistic thinkers, that divine determinism is compatible with human freedom, even though natural determinism is not. After examining the purported differences between divine and natural determinism, I discuss the Consequence Argument, which has been put forward to establish the incompatibility of natural determinism and human freedom. The Consequence Argument, I note, hinges on the premise that an action ultimately determined by factors outside of the actor’s control is not free. Since, I argue, divine determinism also entails that human actions are ultimately determined by factors outside of the actors’ control, I suggest that a parallel argument to the Consequence Argument can be constructed for the incompatibility of divine determinism and human freedom. I conclude that those who reject natural compatibilism on the basis of the Consequence Argument should also reject divine compatibilism.     

The RNA World and Divine Action in and Through Quantum Mechanics

ABSTRACT

Life emerged on Earth approximately 4.1 billion years ago. Current scholarship on the origin of life supports the RNA world scenario, although controversy still goes on. This article examines the origin issue in light of a divine action theory proposed by Robert J. Russell. Although the author himself has not much considered the issue in light of the divine action, the article is still fruitful in the sense that the origin of life issue is now incorporated into the dialogue with divine action, and also that Russell’s divine action theory can be reconsidered in a new context.