In this series of “illuminations,” I cite passages from David Bentley Hart’s collection of essays The Hidden and the Manifest that I have found particularly instructive. I hope they will generate good discussion.
Does God predestine the actions of human beings? Are we free or determined? For centuries Christians have lain awake at night pondering upon this question. Our logic tells us that if we are free, then we are not determined; that if we are determined, then we are not free. But what if our logic is faulty? What if the either/or question–freedom or determinism?–is meaningless, given the nature of divine transcendence?
Perhaps the most difficult discipline the Christian metaphysical tradition requires of its students is the preservation of a consistent and adequate sense of the difference between primary and secondary causality: between, that is, the transcendent and the contingent, or between–to abuse Heidegger’s idiom–the ontological and the ontic. It is a distinction so elementary to any metaphysics of creation that no philosophical theologian consciously ignores it; and yet its full implications often elude even the most scrupulous among us. This is no small matter; for the theological consequences of failing to observe the proper logic of divine transcendence are invariably unhappy, and in some cases even disastrous.
Consider, for instance, one of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s more cherished axioms: “God determining or determined: there is no other alternative.” This is a logical error whose gravity it would be difficult to exaggerate. It is a venerable error, admittedly, adumbrated or explicit in the arguments of even some of the greatest theologians of the Western Church; but an error it remains. Applied to two terms within any shared frame of causal operation, between which some reciprocal real relation obtains, such a formula is perfectly cogent; but as soon as “God” is introduced as one of its terms, the formula is immediately rendered vacuous. If divine transcendence is an intelligible concept, it must be understood according to a rule enunciated by Maximus the Confessor: whereas the being of finite things has nonbeing as its opposite, God’s being is entirely beyond any such opposition. God’s being is necessary, that is, not simply because it is inextinguishable or eternally immune to nothingness, but because it transcends the dialectic of existence and nonexistence altogether; it is simple and infinite actuality, utterly pure of ontic determination, the “is” both of the “it is” and of the “it is not.” It transcends, that is to say, even the distinction between the finite act and finite potency, since both exist by virtue of their participation in God’s infinite actuality, in which all that might be always supereminently is. God is absolute, that is to say, in the most proper sense: he is eternally “absolved” of finite causality, so much so that he need not–in any simple univocal sense–determine in order to avoid being determined. His transcendence is not something achieved by the negation of its “opposite.” (“Impassibility as Transcendence,” pp. 168-169)
Yet it remains difficult to shake off the dilemma–either we are free or determined. Hence we need to think more deeply the significance of the creatio ex nihilo and our participation in the eternal freedom of God. Most importantly, we must recognize the qualitative difference between the divine act of creation and creaturely causality:
As primary cause of all things, after all, God is first and foremost the ontological cause. He imparts being to what, in itself, is nothing at all; out of the infinite plenitude of his actuality, he gives being to both potency and act; and yet what he creates, as the effect of a truly transcendent causality, possesses its own being, and truly exists as other than God (though God is not some “other thing” set alongside it). This donation of being is so utterly beyond any species of causality we can conceive that the very word “cause” has only the most remotely analogous value in regard to it. And, whatever warrant Thomists might find in Thomas for speaking of God as the first efficient cause of creation (which I believe to be in principle wrong), such language is misleading unless the analogical scope of the concept of efficiency has been extended almost to the point of apophasis. (p. 175)
In the end, it is no more contradictory to say that God can create–out of the infinite wellspring of his own freedom–dependent freedoms that he does not determine, than it is to say that he can create–out of the infinite wellspring of his being–dependent beings that are genuinely somehow other than God. In neither case, however, is it possible to describe the “mechanism” by which he does this. This aporia is simply inseparable from the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo–which, no matter how we may attempt to translate it into causal terms we can understand, remains forever incomprehensible to us. (p. 181)
Many of our conundrums flow from a false conception of divinity and disappear once we begin to grasp the nature of transcendence. We glimpse the absolute Mystery that eludes our reason. Yet so many questions remain …
Eclectic Orthodoxy 
God, being the metaphysical ultimate, determines not only what actually is but also what is possible.
So the answer to the dilemma “Are we free or determined” is “Both. We are free in that we can we have the power of sovereign indeed creative choice and action. But we are also determined in that God determines the space of possibility in which choose and act. – Dianelos
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I think the question still remains though, whether within the space of possibilities our individual actions are free or determined, and how this influences our understanding of divine foreknowledge, omnipotence, providence, etc.
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Within the space of possibility we are free to choose. The alternative would be that God determines how we choose too in which case we are being fooled by God to think we have freedom when in fact we haven’t. In any case without freedom theism makes not sense, so what’s the point? What’s more without freedom our everyday life is rendered a continuous joke. In short to assume that one is not free, against all theistic and existential reason, is a radically skeptical move that leads nowhere.
Some people argue that creaturely freedom violates God’s sovereignty, others that freedom of choice is an incoherent concept, others that there is scientific evidence against our being free to choose – but I find that all that is false. To understand our condition as one where God determines the space of possibility and makes us free to choose within that space works very well as a first step I think.
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If I am understanding you rightly, you are proposing that freedom requires multiple choices: I am free if I can choose x instead of y and vice versa. But from the classical Christian viewpoint, this cannot be what true freedom is about. The saints in heaven are absolutely free, yet they are incapable of choosing evil. That, I think, must be our model. Certainly that is what Hart believes. Genuine freedom does not fit into the libertarian/compatibilist philosophical construct. For more by Hart on this, see “Universal Salvation and Human Freedom.”
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To barge in a bit, I think there is a distinction between saying that freedom entails a choice between good and evil actions, and requiring as a necessary condition of freedom that there be the option to choose x or y (where neither need be evil). I would not defend the former, but I cannot see how a substantive account of freedom could deny the latter (Denys Turner notwithstanding). How else could one make the important distinctions between pollination systems on the one hand, and courtship between human beings on the other?
I do, however, think God’s activity in our acts of willing has to go far beyond having a neutral “space of possibilities”. God, as Being, must be active in all our acts of choosing (there can’t be any act of choice independent of his creative act), and, as the Good, he must be the ultimate end of all our acts of willing. Without the former, our acts of choice would not exist, and without the latter they could not be motivated. Neither need necessitate what persons choose, and so they don’t violate human freedom.
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I don’t see how that conclusion follows.
As a general rule, compatibility is had by changing the question. The question is: is there in human choice a real possibility of selecting more than one option; a possibility foreclosed only by that same act of choice? Unless one rejects the principle of contradiction and the principle of excluded middle, the answer has to be either “yes” or “no.”
Compatibilists always insist on a different question. Usually this is something along the lines of “is there something outside the human being that determines that person’s choice.” Then follows a great deal of confusion as to what “something outside” refers to. (Do genes count? What about God?) That’s not the question that gets at the heart of the matter.
I tend to agree with St. Thomas’ assessment of the position that would deny the former question while affirming the latter, though perhaps not in the harsh terms he used in De Malo.
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“If divine transcendence is an intelligible concept, it must be understood according to a rule enunciated by Maximus the Confessor: whereas the being of finite things has nonbeing as its opposite, God’s being is entirely beyond any such opposition. God’s being is necessary, that is, not simply because it is inextinguishable or eternally immune to nothingness, but because it transcends the dialectic of existence and nonexistence altogether; it is simple and infinite actuality, utterly pure of ontic determination, the “is” both of the “it is” and of the “it is not.”
I must confess that no matter how often I read statements like this, I still find it quite difficult to gain even a rudimentary understanding of transcendence. I think I’m slowly learning how not to think of God, and I can kind of “see” why we ought not to conceive of God in the ways Hart argues against, but I can’t exactly explain why. I do find it helpful to be reminded not to think of Divine necessity as meaning merely that God can’t not exist. For me, that way of thinking would tend towards conceptualizing God as a kind of person who happens to be indestructible, though who in principle could be at least open to an assault from nothingness; someone who has a legitimate nemesis in evil. But, despite our constant experience of some sort of struggle between being and non-being, God-in-himself must be beyond that struggle altogether. But how to conceive of God’s being as not finding an opposite in non-being seems nigh impenetrable to me.
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Matthew, it may be helpful to consider that God simply does not have opposites (that is the point of saying that God is beyond dialectics). We do, however, have opposites, and therein we can see the contrast (and obtain a glimpse of the divine mode of existence). I can be, or not be (at one point I was not, but now I am). Such cannot be said of God, as His nature is to be. As such His existence is necessary, or we may say God is a necessary being.
Our struggle as diastemic beings, beholden as we are to the gaps (diastema) of time, dimension, and composition, is to conceive of God as adiastemic. Adiastemic existence means the perfect coinherence of being and doing, of desire and possession, of will and power, activity and rest.
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I think that part of my problem is that I tend to try to understand concepts by looking for illustrations and examples, but there simply aren’t any examples that I can point to and say “ah, so God exists in the same way that _____ exists.” It was helpful of you to point out that God has no opposites. This shifted me away from thinking of God in terms of some property (like existence or necessity). If it would be foolish to ask “what’s the opposite of a goat” how much more foolish to ask “what is the opposite of God?” Yet, at least in the case of the goat, it’s individual properties can be differentiated and opposites potentially discerned. God, being simple, is identical to his properties (though I’m not sure that’s the right word), so the question of what is the opposite of God’s attribute XYZ is just as nonsensical as the question of what the opposite of God is.
Is that a reasonable way of beginning to think about it?
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Yes I think so. It is not that God’s difference is merely in respect to ‘this’ or ‘that’ (although it is of course) – but the difference is to the very mode (tropos) of existence. This is why we like to speak of an analogia entis – for the analogy is ontologically grounded, in contrast to a likeness in appearance, name, or concept. So this difference is in respect to everything (and that is why we must maintain the semper in the semper maior dissimilitudo. The unlikeness of divine mode of being to the created mode of being is ever infinitely greater than any likeness (but, I hasten to say, not ever entirely without likeness).
What we are attempting to do is to condition our diastemic conceptualization (language, thought) to befit the adiastemic mode of being. However, this is strictly not possible (on level of a category mistake), so we must always keep in mind that our conceptualizations are merely analogical and are trumped by ontological dissimilitude.
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I would add that one must have a firm command of the traditional understanding of divine simplicity as it is the ‘ground rule’ for all further theological ruminations. It encapsulates the implications ontological dissimilarity has for the theology enterprise (and yes we are all theologians, even, or especially, thinkers like Richard Dawkins). Get simplicity wrong and one will invariably end up with an anthropophatic deity.
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So, God’s being “transcends the dialectic of existence and nonexistence altogether;” while this dialectic is constitutive of the nature of finite beings. So, is it that both sides of the dialectic -ex nihilo/non-being and being- are equivalent to the things they constitute? Meaning without the dialectic there are not things, and without the things there is not the dialectic? And God’s being is utterly uncontingent, so is utterly not a dialectic/thing existence. So how can this be reconciled with our being created in His image? It must be that ‘beyond Being’ decided to enter into ‘dialectic/thing being,’ and only in this way it can be said God gave us anything of Himself. He gives to us of His Being, not in our intitial nature of dialectic/thing-being, but in that He entered our ‘dialectic/thing-being.’ And had He not entered, He would have remained utterly other than us in his ‘beyond Being.’ Yes, no??? Were my thoughts here even in the ballpark, or am I completely misunderstanding what being said in this series of blogs?
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Michelle,
It is important to make a distinction between God’s creative activity and its effects. The former is God, the latter is creation. The effects analogically mirror the creator, the image reflecting the likeness of God always in a greater unlikeness. With this distinction in mind, God does require to ‘enter’ creation in order to imprint His image.
The point though is that as did the fathers, the ultimate division of being (as Gregory of Nyssa likes to refer to it) is between Uncreate and the created. The difficulty for creatures is to not conceive of God along the lines of the creature mode of existence. See my comment to Matthew above.
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typo: should read: “With this distinction in mind, God does NOT require to ‘enter’ creation in order to imprint His image.”
one of these days Fr Aidan will let us edit our comments 🙂
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Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
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If a thing is a dialectic of non-existence and existence, then the thing’s ‘existence-side’ is defined by what it’s not, while it’s ‘non-existence-side’ is defined by what it is. Therefore, God simultaneously created ‘non-existence’ and ‘existence’ in creating the thing itself.
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Oh, to be a thing is such a mysterious and wonderful thing!
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Does anyone know of a good primer on primary & secondary causality? Hart brings them up fairly often, but based on the significance he assigns to them and the conclusions that he draws from them, I’m confident that I have not adequately grasped their meanings.
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Yes, I can recommend Allen’s Philosophy for Understanding Theology http://a.co/fPMSsJ4 and the companion which includes the primary readings.
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the companion is http://a.co/cTeb1De
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Looks right up my alley! Thanks Robert!
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I read the intro and it seems like the kind of book I’ve been looking for. Just ordered a copy. Thanks Robert!
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Thought that prior comment didn’t go through… oh well, thanking someone too many times isn’t the worst mistake to make
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This all seems like Heidegger. Is Hart placing Christian thought inside a Heideggerian framework, or is he “baptizing” Heideggerian thought with Christian truth? The church fathers took the truth given in the apostolic deposit and baptized neo-platonism, not the other way around. And we’ve been warned by the Church that it can never be the other way around.
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When Hart says “to abuse Heidegger’s idiom” that’s a signal that one isn’t being treated to Christian thought placed inside the philosopher’s framework. Most of the time, the opposite is the truth with Heidegger. His best insights are obfuscated stolen loot from theology. Heidegger dresses his insight in vatic language and the academics are pleased with what would have set off alarms if baldly stated as theology. But the main point in this section of Hart is the distinction between a starved, univocal metaphysics and a metaphysics that can properly be educed from creation and revelation. Ontic thinking and “onto-theology” is all part of the narrow, reductionist (zero-sum game) where God and creatures influence one another (determine) because ultimately players on the same (univocal) plane of being (which again, logically would comprehend both God and creatures.)
When Hart alludes to the ontic/ontological distinction in the Heideggerian metier, he is pointing to the contrast between a groundless appearing (finite being) and the Being that founds, but is “outside finite appearance.” Such a necessary being is not properly an efficient cause, because when we think efficient cause, we think “what is done to what is there to work with to determine a particular outcome.” In short, it is a mechanical understanding. Creation is not a machine, God is not a mechanic. Divine transcendence marks the ineffable singularity of Being that is beyond being and nothingness, the very dialectic of ontic being. If one simply thinks God is infinite (primary) causality and creatures are finite (secondary) causality, and one further thinks causality as literal or metaphorical mechanical forces, one will utterly miss the difference of God and one will not begin to understand the agapeic generosity of creation or the kenotic, nurturing humility of God. The tendency to think in just this fashion is why one should only use the term “cause” for God in the loosest, analogical manner.
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Thank you for this, Brian. So, now that Hart has convinced us that God’s “beyond-ness” prevents us from elucidating our being-ness in traditional terms of causation, does he ever suggest a better way? Maybe myth? Poetry?
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Michelle, If you don’t mind a creative writer’s perspective, I’ll state my own take on your question. Myth and poetry and narrative (especially fictitious) are potent vehicles for approaching truth because through their verisimilitude to reality they invite us into their world and in doing so we become more self-aware participants in reality/being. At their best theology and philosophy can only describe reality. So, I find that I am better able to understand my place in reality through the aesthetics of the Truth revealed in Christ as the Divine Word that suffuses all things; practically speaking this means reading great literature (and mythology) serves as an existential lens that is invaluable in apprehending that Word as he discloses himself in Scripture, nature, and history. With these things in mind, as a reader of theology, DBH’s aesthetic approach draws theology closer to the power of poetry and narrative because of his commitment to the Beauty, Truth, and Goodness of the Divine. In a very real sense I believe he is bringing philosophers and theologians up to speed with poets like Keats or Tennyson even if they were lagging a century or two behind.
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After thinking about it for a few minutes, I’m going to attempt to answer my own question. I read this yesterday in George Florovsky’s book, “Creation and Redemption;
“God descends to man and reveals himself to man. And man sees and beholds God. And he describes what he sees and hears; he testifies to what has been revealed to him. The greatest mystery and miracle of the Bible consists of the fact that it is the Word of God in the language of man. God speaks to man in the language of man. This constitutes the authentic anthropomorphism of Revelation. This anthropomorphism however is not merely an accommodation. Human language in no way reduces the absolute character of Revelation nor limits the power of God’s Word.”
And, “The Word of God can be expressed precisely and adequately in the language of man. For man is created in the image of God. It is precisely for this reason that man is capable of perceiving God, of receiving God’s Word and of preserving it. The Word of God is not diminished while it resounds in human language. On the contrary, the human word is transformed and, as it were, transfigured because of the fact that it pleased God to speak in human language. Man is able to hear God, to grasp, receive and preserve the word of God…”
The inaccessibility of God to our “scientific” sensibilities, due to his being “beyond Being,” is overcome in Christ. Florovsky says we are made capable of talking about God and His ways without diminishment of our understanding through His entrance into human history as the Incarnate God-man. This entrance and union transforms human language and reason, making it suitable. So, now if someone asks, “how is it comprehensible that God, who is beyond Being, created our own being endowed with a creaturely goodness related to His own Goodness?,” we would answer by pointing their gaze in the direction of Christ. And by fixing themselves upon Him, and being baptised into His body, they would open themselves up to a transformation and illumination capable of comprehending this very thing within their nous.
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Jedidiah,
I like how you describe your art form as revealing existential and participatory truths. As a painter I also understand beauty as truth, existentially accessible through visual mediums.
If you read my above comment on Florovsky, he speaks of God’s entrance into the human realm as transfiguring even philosophy and theology into the realm of existential and participatory truth. Interesting stuff.
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Thanks Michelle, I think you bring in some interesting points in your Florovsky quotation. As I read it, it drips with Athanasius’ Christology. It’s certainly worth pondering more. It is an endless fountain of delight to contemplate how the Incarnation has imbued all creation and human endeavors with Divine beauty.
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Michelle,
The better and only way to truly acknowledge the divine mode of existence is by way analogy, keeping ever in mind that in likeness there is always a greater unlikeness. We can only uphold a true likeness by realizing that a greater dissimilarity exists. God is good – yes. But not like I am good, or an apple is good. The apple and I participate in goodness, but God is perfectly good, and not in part. So we say God is goodness, the goodness against which all good is measured. The similarity to God’s goodness by our participation in the good is overtaken by a greater dissimilarity to His perfect goodness. Strictly, it is not even proper to speak of divine perfection as perfection indicates change.
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Actually, just the opposite, Michelle. Hart has critiqued Heidegger at some length in the first essay of The Hidden and the Manifest. For a good introduction to Hart’s understanding of God as Being, see his The Experience of God.
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Thank you, Fr. Aiden
I’m one step ahead of you. This last post of your series has inspired me to check out “The Hidden and the Manifest” from my university’s library. I just started reading it ☺ And I will check out the link too
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It is interesting how Hart’s explanation ( at least as expressed in these excerpts) does not include reference to the cross, which would seem to be an egregious omission, given that the New Testament describes it as God’s very glory.
We can perhaps think about creation as reflected in two poles: the creation ex nihilo of the cosmos — whether that be conceived of as the big bang, or something else — and the creation ex nihilo through the cross (an idea reflected in patristic tradition). While it may overly-challenge our common understanding to identify the locus of creation in the cross, neither does it seem correct to understand the meaning of creation solely in relation to an initial, cosmological or ontological event, as though that, in itself, could determine the essence of created being. Perhaps there are other ways to think about this.
When we think of the initial (chronologically) cosmic creation or ontological origin, it is difficult to understand how that, in itself, could permit of freedom within the resulting creation. From that standpoint, everything would seem to be pure causality and necessity. No Christian theologian, however, would question the idea that God himself continues to possess freedom, and that he can (and has) freely entered into that creation –– however dominated by necessity it may otherwise be –– rendering himself subject to it. This, the cross, is the second pole in which the meaning and character of creation is reflected, and which, as much as the first, imprints and bestows upon creation its nature.
Whereas the first pole is typified by necessity, the second pole is typified by freedom. Creation subsists within the dialectic of those two poles. We experience the logic of either of these two poles as we think of ourselves as objects of causal forces, or as we emphasize our subjective experience of freedom. Perhaps for a Christian, though, this entails more than a mere shift in perspective. What if it is the case that as we become conformed to the image of Christ’s sacrificial offering, we do in fact move closer to that pole in which are actions can be described as free; whereas, as we minimize or resist the impulse of sacrificial love, necessity becomes more and more our defining characteristic, regardless of what our subjective experience may try to tell us?
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Welcome to Eclectic Orthodoxy, Fr Isaac. Three brief comments:
1) As you note, in this series I’m only offering excerpts from David Hart’s essays. That my particular excerpts in this article do not explicitly reference Jesus is neither here nor there. If you wish to see how profoundly Trinitarian Hart’s thinking on divine transcendence is, you will need to read his essays but especially The Beauty of the Infinite. Of course, when Hart is simply talking about generic theism, as in The Experience of God, he does not explicitly invoke Christ, but that omission is determined by the intent of the book.
2) I do believe that Christians, Jews, and Muslims share a common understanding of the creatio ex nihilo and that it is appropriate to think and talk about it without explicit mention of the Trinity. That the creatio ex nihilo means something significantly different for Christians than for Jews and Muslims needs to be demonstrated. Each tradition affirms the world’s ontological dependence upon the One who is the source and ground of its being.
3) Readers of Eclectic Orthodoxy know that I love paradoxical expressions like “God creates the world from the Cross”; but these expressions need to be carefully qualified and explained. The death of Jesus belongs to the economy of salvation. It need not have been, for the world need not have been—yet God would still be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But given the existence of this world, and given the identity of Jesus as the divine Son, and given the recreative work of salvation accomplished in his Cross and Resurrection, it does in fact make a kind of sense to speak of Jesus as creating the world from the Cross; and I would not hesitate to declare this in my preaching (I am, after all, a student of Robert Jenson). But … the economic Trinity cannot and should not be collapsed into the immanent Trinity. A distinction must be maintained. Here I have to side with Hart over Jenson and Moltmann.
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Father Isaac,
Cosmological arguments that entail a proposed mechanism for how determinate being was determined in its particulars do not actually broach the genuinely ontological. They are still under the rubric of a univocal paradigm of ontic happening. The dependence of contingent being ultimately alludes to something prior to time. The coming-to-be at all; the that it is of being indicates an Origin not to be confused or conflated with a beginning in time. Furthermore, creation should not be confused with the Deist watchmaker god who sits extrinsic to a well-designed machine. God’s transcendence is not dualistically opposed to creation. On the contrary, a true appreciation for divine transcendence discloses God’s unimaginable intimacy with creation. Hence, properly understood, one cannot conceive of creation as apart from the ever sustaining nurture of the Origin. That being so, the idea of creation where freedom can be conceived as an alien property is a misconception that can only be entertained by harboring a metaphysical understanding of Creation outside the context of Biblical revelation.
If you like, one can think in terms largely univocal, mechanistic, driven by necessity, but Creation has an innate porosity beyond such narrow limits. Ignorance or spiritual blindness may constrain one within such limits, but reality is always a beckoning. Just so certitudes are strained by perplexity and wonder. Both joy and sorrow evince the falsity of univocal solidity. Equivocity pulls us out of complacency. But ultimately, I agree with you that one can become psychically trapped in an evil dream. One can suppose one lives in a machine and act as if one is nothing but a determined cog in that machine. And our freedom, to be frank, is limited by circumstances outside our choices. But our depths are not our own. We are always a gift and gifted to ourselves.
You might peruse the second comment I made in the Hartian Illuminations devoted to Transcendence as Negation and the Analogy of Being. I briefly summarize John Betz’s assessment of the dispute between Erich Przywara and Karl Barth regarding the analogy of being. Barth also worried about an analogy of being insufficiently Christological, though he never fully understand analogy of being as Przywara proclaims it. Likewise, Hart is not expressing an ontological argument that brackets out Christology. On the contrary, it is only a metaphysic derived from TriUne revelation that makes sense of the absolutely unique act of Creation. That our freedom can only culminate in theosis, that Christ enacts our unique name is true. The full flourishing of Creation is the life of the Eschaton.
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Sorry for the spelling and grammar errors. It is difficult to write well whilst being spoken to and I was distracted: “how determinate being was determined” . . . Barth . . . never fully understood analogy of being.
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I corrected your text. I know how difficult it is not to imitate the typos of Tom Belt. 😉
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