More from Mr. H, in discussing the change-of-heart of (now former) atheist Antony Flew several years back. This post deals with both predestination and theodicy. These are miscellaneous thoughts of Mr. H in response to some of Flew's criticisms of Christianity.
For your consideration, Martin ---------- A few more comments on Flew: << It seems to me, that from the existence of Aristotle's God, you can't infer anything about human behavior >>It's true that from a bare definition or abstract concept of God, whether Aristotelian, Augustinian or Thomistic, you can't infer anything in particular
about God's individual designs.But what's the point of this objection? In the nature of the case, a general concept, whether about God or anything else, doesn't necessarily spell out a
specific application. << What Deists, such as the Mr. Jefferson who drafted the AmericanDeclaration of Independence, believed was that, while reason, mainly in the form of arguments to design, assures us that there is a God, there is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or for any transactions between that
God and individual human beings. >>Actually, a noninterventionist model of God is not a very accurate way of
distinguishing deism from classical Christian theism (hereafter CCT).In CCT, God subsists outside of time and space. So, ontologically speaking, God does not intervene in mundane affairs, in the sense of discrete temporal fiats within the timeline. Rather, God instantiates the entire timeline by one indivisible fiat.
On a timeless model, this means that God's primarily causality is even more pervasive than on a temporal model. On a temporal model, you have a regime of
second-causes punctuated by primary causes--creation, miracles. But on a timeless model, everything has a primary cause. So God is more involved in mundane affairs on a timeless model than a temporal model.Put another way, a noninterventionist model doesn't posit fewer effects of
God than an interventionist model. Rather, the reverse is the case.Because deism is a manmade belief-system, there is no received version of deism. As a matter of convention, the deist version of noninterventionism posits fewer effects of God. In particular, Christian redemption and revelation are
excised entirely.But that is not an implication of a noninterventionist model, per se. We need
to distinguish between causal and ontological intervention. On a timeless model of the Incarnation, God doesn't become Incarnate,entering space and time. Rather, there was never a time when or before which God was not incarnate, although the Incarnation is a datable event. It just depends on
whether you're looking at this from a divine or mundane perspective.The difference between an interventionist and noninterventionist model is that on the latter, the whole thing is frontloaded. Every event is predetermined, and every event is contained in God's creative fiat. This includes all of the
revelatory, redemptive, miraculous happenings.<< My own initial lack of enthusiasm for the ontological argument developed into strong repulsion when I realized from reading the Theodicy (15) of Leibniz that it was the identification of the concept of Being with the concept of Goodness (which ultimately derives from Plato's identification in The Republic of the Form or Idea of the Good with the Form or the Idea of the Real) which enabled Leibniz in his Theodicy validly to conclude that an universe in which most human beings are predestined to an eternity of torture is the “best of all
possible worlds.” >>Well, I admit that I'm not a big fan of Leibniz' theological method at this
juncture, but this is a rather shallow objection.The "best" is a comparative concept. The best relative to what? The best for whom? Obviously, damnation is not the best possible world for the damned, but that, of itself, does not falsify a Leibnizian theodicy. If we define the "best" as the greater good, it is unclear how the existence of hell automatically
outweighs the overall good. Flew needs to mount an argument for this. It is also unclear how accidental eternal torture is an improvement overpredestined torture. If the means (say, libertarian freedom) makes no difference to the outcome, it is hard to see how the damned would care whether they chose hell for themselves or God chose it for them. They will still complain about
the consequences, will they not? In the nature of the case, the very idea of a theodicy assumes a divinerationale for the existence of evil. God creates the world with the Fall in view,
and does so pursuant to the furtherance of some higher end.The problem of evil is greater if God didn't purpose the Fall than if He did.
For if it had no purpose, it can have no justification whatsoever.<< If all I knew or believed about God was what I might have learned from Aristotle, then I should have assumed that everything in the universe, including human conduct, was exactly as God wanted it to be. And this is indeed the case, in so far as both Christianity and Islam are predestinarian, a fundamental
teaching of both religious systems. >><< But for me the most important thing about Spinoza is not what he says but what he does not say. He does not say that God has any preferences either about or any intentions concerning human behavior or about the eternal destinies
of human beings. >>Flew seems to like the Spinozistic model better than the Aristotelian. Yet his provisional embrace of Intelligent Design theory commits him to something like the Aristotelian version. If so, then he is stuck with a God of final as well as efficient
causes.However, he also confuses Biblical foreordination with Koranic fate. From
what I can tell, there's not much teleology in Islamic theology. No realphilosophy of history. And Allah is pretty capricious. He is not a covenant-keeping
God.
