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ABSTRACT
I argue that Christian apophaticism provides the most powerful and economical response to the evidential argument from evil for the non-existence of God. I also reply to the objection that Christian apophaticism is incoherent, because it appears to entail the truth of the following contradiction: it is both possible and impossible to know God’s essential properties. To meet this objection, I outline a coherent account of the divine attributes inspired by the theology of the Greek Father’s and St. Gregory Palamas.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Nagasawa, “A New Defence,” 577.
2. See Howard-Snyder, The Evidential Argument; Rowe, God and the Problem.
3. ‘The argument from evil is often regarded as a criticism of theism in general, but that is not correct. The argument is directed specifically against theists who believe in the existence of God as defined in the omniGod thesis (or theses which are sufficiently similar to it)’ Nagasawa, “A New Defence,” 583.
4. Hickson, “A Brief History,” 16 emphasis his.
5. Nagasawa, “A New Defence,” 577.
6. See Richard, The Untamed God, 63–81, 94–9; Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, 56, 165; and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations, 157, 196–9.
7. Rowe, “The Problem of Evil,” 336.
8. Every formulation of EAE is designed to undermine the omniGod thesis; which is why I have not canvassed other, more recent, formulations of the argument.
9. See Hägg, Clement of Alexandria, 3; Remes, Neoplatonism, 162–5; Rudavsky, Maimonides, 36–57; Ormsby, “Islamic Theology,” 433–4.
10. Hägg, Clement of Alexandria, 1.
11. See, for example, The Cloud of Unknowing.
12. I am here considering the family of arguments for God’s existence which find their origins in Pre-Socratic thought, were explicated by Plato and Aristotle, rigorously developed by Stoic and Neoplatonic philosophers, and eventually appropriated and developed further by early Christian thinkers.
13. ‘Transcendence’ should be interpreted apophatically: God is not an object among other objects inhabiting our universe.
14. Maximus the Confessor, The Philokalia Volume II, 114–5.
15. Ibid., 183.
16. Ibid., 53.
17. Ibid., 64.
18. Ibid., 101.
19. John of Damascus, Writings, 166.
20. Ibid., 170.
21. Hickson, ‘A Brief History,” 16.
22. In Section 3 I explain how the proponent of CA can coherently say God has the property of goodness, love, etc., without embracing the omniGod thesis.
23. My account is inspired by them; I am not merely exegeting their writings on this subject. Rather, I am drawing on their insights, and the rich philosophical tradition from which they flow, to present a coherent account of the divine attributes that is logically consistent with apophaticism.
24. Oderberg, Real Essentialism, x.
25. Support for this can be found in Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, 164–5.
26. Clarke, The One and the Many, 319.
27. Oderberg, Real Essentialism, 157.
28. Saying that a property is necessarily connected to the essence of a thing does not entail all the individuals within a given species will exemplify that property. For example, the property ‘being a scientist’ is necessarily connected with the essence of man. It is in virtue of the fact that man is rational that a particular man is a scientist. Nevertheless, not all men are scientists for various reasons; e.g. physical or mental ailment, lack of training or education, choosing to become an artist instead of a scientist, etc. Ibid., 159.
29. I’m using the term ‘man’ in the generic universal sense to denote both male and female human beings.
30. Ibid., 157.
31. Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, 165.
32. For those interested in such a defence, I highly recommend David Oderberg’s book, Real Essentialism, which I have cited extensively in this section.
33. For a comprehensive historical survey of the philosophical and theological development of the term ‘energeia’ see David Bradshaw’s important work Aristotle East and West.
34. Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, 238–9.
35. St. Gregory, citing the Cappadocian Fathers, states: ‘As Basil the Great says, “The guarantee of the existence of every essence is its natural energy which leads the mind to the nature.” And according to St. Gregory of Nyssa and all the other Fathers, the natural energy is the power which manifests every essence, and only nonbeing is deprived of this power, for the being which participates in an essence will also surely participate in the power which naturally manifests that essence.’ Gregory Palamas, Triads, 95.
36. Palamas, Triads, 95–6.
37. Given real essentialism and the essence/energies distinction, the assertion that God has various properties does not undermine divine simplicity. Because properties, on this view, are not parts of God’s essence.
38. This list is by no means exhaustive; to be sure, there are other divine names we could add to it.
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Joshua Matthan Brown
Joshua Matthan Brown is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Birmingham and the assistant chaplain to eastern Christians at Cardiff University. Currently, his research interests include defending the eutaxiological argument for the existence of God and applying apophatic theology to various problems within the philosophy of religion. He can be contacted by email at: [email protected].