In our discussions, I’ve shown why the perpetuity that you and Bruce advocate is problematic, not because it disagrees with classical theism, but because it fails the test of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. I have not mentioned that it fails also the test of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, though it does.
You have not addressed those arguments. You have not even noticed them. To be honest, it begins to look as though you are the one who is so committed to his own notions that he can’t bring himself to confront the problems inherent in them.
That is how Kristor of the Orthosphere has summarized the state of our discussions on freedom, the nature of God, time, etc. Perpetuity is the name Kristor has ascribed to the position that Bruce and I posit concerning the nature of time. It is his term, not ours.
Anyway, the reason Bruce and I have not addressed the “tests” Kristor suggests is simple—they are irrelevant to our assumptions.
Bruce explains:
As an argument it gets nowhere with me, because I reject the assumptions behind the first premise "Everything that begins to exist has a cause" - which assumes that there are "things" that "begin" to exist (rather than having always existed) - and I infer that he assumes that these "things" include human beings.
Ditto for me. To be honest, I don’t understand Kristor’s insistence that we address things like the Kalam Cosmological Argument or the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
I believe in the reality of uncreated freedom, which entails that God is not the only uncaused cause at the most fundamental level of existence. Thus, the KCA and PSR have no real bearing on my assumptions; however, they have a tremendous bearing on Kristor’s assumptions. In fact, it is fair to say that they represent the very basis of Kristor’s classical theist assumptions and beliefs.
From all of this, I can conclude that Kristor regards my assumptions as incoherent. He is motivated to prove this supposed incoherence to me via arguments supporting his own classical theist assumptions, beliefs, views, and position, which he regards as ironclad and true.
I touched briefly on the KCA yesterday and will continue exploring it in future posts to address Kristor’s concerns.
I infer that Kristor is throwing the Kalam Cosmological Argument at me because he believes it debunks my assumptions while simultaneously supporting his classical theist position on the nature of God, the origin of Creation, and time.
What is Kristor’s position? Here’s the man in his own words responding to my unthinkable thought crime of considering God’s existence before Creation:
Francis is struggling with that paragraph because he misconstrues eternity. Sub specie aeternitatis, there is no time before God created, and there is no time after God created. Eternity is a now of infinite duration; all times are present to the Eternal One, all at once. He sees all times, but not the way we do. That’s why he tells us, in Exodus 3:14 and John 8:56-58, that he is I AM. Every event occurs for him in the present tense.
Excursus: When God tells us in Exodus 3:14 that he is I AM THAT I AM, he is saying that he is necessary: that there is no cause or reason of him, other than himself; that his being is the reason of his being. NB: what is necessary is ipso facto eternal. Ergo, etc.
Thus for him, his act of being himself and his act of creating and all the moments and creaturely acts in all the worlds he creates are happening now, as aspects of a single act, a single moment, of infinite scope along all dimensions. For him, fiat lux and the eschaton are right now; so is every moment of the everlasting lives of the blessed in heaven. There is for him then no such thing as before he created; no such thing as a time when any creature has not yet been brought to its proper complete fulfillment.
Here is another description of Kristor’s position from a secondary source:
The claim that God is timeless is a denial of the claim that God is temporal. First, God exists, but does not exist at any temporal location. Rather than holding that God is everlastingly eternal, and, therefore, he exists at each time, this position is that God exists but he does not exist at any time at all.
God is beyond time altogether. It could be said that although God does not exist at any time God exists at eternity. That is, eternity can be seen as a non-temporal location as any point within time is a temporal location.
Second, it is thought that God does not experience temporal succession. God’s relation to each event in a temporal sequence is the same as his relation to any other event. God does not experience the first century before he experiences the twenty-first. Both of these centuries are experienced by God in one “timeless now.”
So, while it is true that in the thirteenth century Aquinas prayed for understanding and received it, God’s response to his prayers is not something that also occurred in that century. God, in his timeless state of being, heard Aquinas’ prayers and answered them. He did not first hear them and then answer them. He heard and answered in one timeless moment — in fact, he did so in the same timeless moment that he hears and answers prayers offered in the twenty-first century.
I mentioned that the idea of an atemporal God becomes incoherent if one assumes the reality of time, to which Kristor responded:
It’s the other way round. If God is not atemporal, time becomes an incoherent notion, that cannot be realized concretely.
Okay, now that we have established Kristor’s position, let’s revisit William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument:
The first two premises and conclusion are William Lane Craig’s original formulation of the argument, to which he appends the further premise and conclusion.
The first two premises and conclusion affirm Kristor’s classical theist position, but the appended premise and conclusion do not.
Why?
Because they do not affirm Kristor’s position that God is atemporal. Craig supports Kristor’s assumption about there being no before or after in the life of God, a point Kristor vehemently stressed in his discussions with me:
You can’t talk about before and after in the life of the eternal God of classical theism, and argue from the absurdities that result from so doing, without implicitly presupposing that the eternal God of classical theism is temporal. And to do that is to suppose that he is not the God of classical theism to begin with, but rather a god like Thor. If there is before and after in the life of God, so that he could enjoy his perfection before he created (thus raising the question of why he created a world utterly superfluous to his perfect enjoyment) then he is temporal … and he is not the God that the classical theists are talking about, but a straw man and a misdirection and a confusion. You can’t have it both ways.
Now, Craig’s views align with Kristor as far as before and after the life of God as far as the beginning of the universe and time is concerned; however, unlike Kristor, Craig does not conclude that the God of the Kalam Cosmological Argument is strictly atemporal.
Because the biblical data are underdeterminative, Christian theists have defended a wide variety of views on God’s relationship to time and change. Some have defended views according to which God is timeless and immutable, others views according to which God is omnitemporal and constantly changing. My own view is something of a hybrid:
God is timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation.
What does that mean? Honestly, who the hell knows?
In any case, two things have happened here.
First, the author of the KCA affirms that biblical data are underdeterminative, drawing into question the biblical “proof” Kristor supplies above. He also admits that there are a variety of views out there, undermining Kristor’s stance that the classical theist view is the only correct one.
Second, timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation is NOT the strictly atemporal God that Kristor touts as the only conceivable God.
Kristor has insisted that “If God is not atemporal, time becomes an incoherent notion, that cannot be realized concretely.”
I guess that means he rejects Craig’s position that God is temporal since creation. He must because the claim that God is timeless is a denial of the claim that God is temporal.
It’s all the same to me because—as I mentioned above—I regard the premises and conclusions of the Kalam Cosmological Argument as irrelevant to my assumptions. I don’t think the same could be said of Kristor.
So, here’s my problem.
Why does Kristor tout a cosmological argument that supports his position on some points, yet whose ultimate conclusion diverges on the matter of the “necessity” of God as atemporal?
I shared this link with Kristor during one of our discussions to demonstrate that not all philosophers working within orthodox parameters regard the classical theist position on time as the do-all-and-end-all of the matter. Craig’s ideas about a temporal God were included in that link.
Kristor’s response? He lumps Craig together with other modern philosophers who have “turned away from God and toward the world as their fundamental point of orientation.”
Okay, if that truly is the case, then why badger me with Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument?
Moreover, why does Kristor promote a cosmological argument from a man he accuses of having “turned away from God?”
That aside, strictly speaking, it would seem that Kristor's conceptualization of God fails the Kamal Cosmological Argument, at least as far as the appended premise and conclusion are concerned.
Craig's KCA argues for the reality of a God who is "timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation."
That is not what Kristor argues for. I guess that means he would regard Craig's conceptualization of God as a confusion, misdirection, and straw man. Still, that doesn't save his conceptualization of God from failing Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument, strictly speaking.
So what gives?
I fully expect Kristor will respond in his usual wall-of-text form, defining this, qualifying that, refuting everything else, citing the Bible, all while referring to Aquinus, Anslem, Aristotle, Boethius, etc.
Anyway, I'll have more thoughts on the KCA in my next post.
End note: I find all of this to be a miserable business. Philosophy. Logic. Ultimately, word games that, in the end, prove nothing besides the penchant to draw closer to philosophy than to God.
You have not addressed those arguments. You have not even noticed them. To be honest, it begins to look as though you are the one who is so committed to his own notions that he can’t bring himself to confront the problems inherent in them.
That is how Kristor of the Orthosphere has summarized the state of our discussions on freedom, the nature of God, time, etc. Perpetuity is the name Kristor has ascribed to the position that Bruce and I posit concerning the nature of time. It is his term, not ours.
Anyway, the reason Bruce and I have not addressed the “tests” Kristor suggests is simple—they are irrelevant to our assumptions.
Bruce explains:
As an argument it gets nowhere with me, because I reject the assumptions behind the first premise "Everything that begins to exist has a cause" - which assumes that there are "things" that "begin" to exist (rather than having always existed) - and I infer that he assumes that these "things" include human beings.
Ditto for me. To be honest, I don’t understand Kristor’s insistence that we address things like the Kalam Cosmological Argument or the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
I believe in the reality of uncreated freedom, which entails that God is not the only uncaused cause at the most fundamental level of existence. Thus, the KCA and PSR have no real bearing on my assumptions; however, they have a tremendous bearing on Kristor’s assumptions. In fact, it is fair to say that they represent the very basis of Kristor’s classical theist assumptions and beliefs.
From all of this, I can conclude that Kristor regards my assumptions as incoherent. He is motivated to prove this supposed incoherence to me via arguments supporting his own classical theist assumptions, beliefs, views, and position, which he regards as ironclad and true.
I touched briefly on the KCA yesterday and will continue exploring it in future posts to address Kristor’s concerns.
I infer that Kristor is throwing the Kalam Cosmological Argument at me because he believes it debunks my assumptions while simultaneously supporting his classical theist position on the nature of God, the origin of Creation, and time.
What is Kristor’s position? Here’s the man in his own words responding to my unthinkable thought crime of considering God’s existence before Creation:
Francis is struggling with that paragraph because he misconstrues eternity. Sub specie aeternitatis, there is no time before God created, and there is no time after God created. Eternity is a now of infinite duration; all times are present to the Eternal One, all at once. He sees all times, but not the way we do. That’s why he tells us, in Exodus 3:14 and John 8:56-58, that he is I AM. Every event occurs for him in the present tense.
Excursus: When God tells us in Exodus 3:14 that he is I AM THAT I AM, he is saying that he is necessary: that there is no cause or reason of him, other than himself; that his being is the reason of his being. NB: what is necessary is ipso facto eternal. Ergo, etc.
Thus for him, his act of being himself and his act of creating and all the moments and creaturely acts in all the worlds he creates are happening now, as aspects of a single act, a single moment, of infinite scope along all dimensions. For him, fiat lux and the eschaton are right now; so is every moment of the everlasting lives of the blessed in heaven. There is for him then no such thing as before he created; no such thing as a time when any creature has not yet been brought to its proper complete fulfillment.
Here is another description of Kristor’s position from a secondary source:
The claim that God is timeless is a denial of the claim that God is temporal. First, God exists, but does not exist at any temporal location. Rather than holding that God is everlastingly eternal, and, therefore, he exists at each time, this position is that God exists but he does not exist at any time at all.
God is beyond time altogether. It could be said that although God does not exist at any time God exists at eternity. That is, eternity can be seen as a non-temporal location as any point within time is a temporal location.
Second, it is thought that God does not experience temporal succession. God’s relation to each event in a temporal sequence is the same as his relation to any other event. God does not experience the first century before he experiences the twenty-first. Both of these centuries are experienced by God in one “timeless now.”
So, while it is true that in the thirteenth century Aquinas prayed for understanding and received it, God’s response to his prayers is not something that also occurred in that century. God, in his timeless state of being, heard Aquinas’ prayers and answered them. He did not first hear them and then answer them. He heard and answered in one timeless moment — in fact, he did so in the same timeless moment that he hears and answers prayers offered in the twenty-first century.
I mentioned that the idea of an atemporal God becomes incoherent if one assumes the reality of time, to which Kristor responded:
It’s the other way round. If God is not atemporal, time becomes an incoherent notion, that cannot be realized concretely.
Okay, now that we have established Kristor’s position, let’s revisit William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument:
- Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe has a cause.
- If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists who sans (without) the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.
- Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.
The first two premises and conclusion are William Lane Craig’s original formulation of the argument, to which he appends the further premise and conclusion.
The first two premises and conclusion affirm Kristor’s classical theist position, but the appended premise and conclusion do not.
Why?
Because they do not affirm Kristor’s position that God is atemporal. Craig supports Kristor’s assumption about there being no before or after in the life of God, a point Kristor vehemently stressed in his discussions with me:
You can’t talk about before and after in the life of the eternal God of classical theism, and argue from the absurdities that result from so doing, without implicitly presupposing that the eternal God of classical theism is temporal. And to do that is to suppose that he is not the God of classical theism to begin with, but rather a god like Thor. If there is before and after in the life of God, so that he could enjoy his perfection before he created (thus raising the question of why he created a world utterly superfluous to his perfect enjoyment) then he is temporal … and he is not the God that the classical theists are talking about, but a straw man and a misdirection and a confusion. You can’t have it both ways.
Now, Craig’s views align with Kristor as far as before and after the life of God as far as the beginning of the universe and time is concerned; however, unlike Kristor, Craig does not conclude that the God of the Kalam Cosmological Argument is strictly atemporal.
Because the biblical data are underdeterminative, Christian theists have defended a wide variety of views on God’s relationship to time and change. Some have defended views according to which God is timeless and immutable, others views according to which God is omnitemporal and constantly changing. My own view is something of a hybrid:
God is timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation.
What does that mean? Honestly, who the hell knows?
In any case, two things have happened here.
First, the author of the KCA affirms that biblical data are underdeterminative, drawing into question the biblical “proof” Kristor supplies above. He also admits that there are a variety of views out there, undermining Kristor’s stance that the classical theist view is the only correct one.
Second, timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation is NOT the strictly atemporal God that Kristor touts as the only conceivable God.
Kristor has insisted that “If God is not atemporal, time becomes an incoherent notion, that cannot be realized concretely.”
I guess that means he rejects Craig’s position that God is temporal since creation. He must because the claim that God is timeless is a denial of the claim that God is temporal.
It’s all the same to me because—as I mentioned above—I regard the premises and conclusions of the Kalam Cosmological Argument as irrelevant to my assumptions. I don’t think the same could be said of Kristor.
So, here’s my problem.
Why does Kristor tout a cosmological argument that supports his position on some points, yet whose ultimate conclusion diverges on the matter of the “necessity” of God as atemporal?
I shared this link with Kristor during one of our discussions to demonstrate that not all philosophers working within orthodox parameters regard the classical theist position on time as the do-all-and-end-all of the matter. Craig’s ideas about a temporal God were included in that link.
Kristor’s response? He lumps Craig together with other modern philosophers who have “turned away from God and toward the world as their fundamental point of orientation.”
Okay, if that truly is the case, then why badger me with Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument?
Moreover, why does Kristor promote a cosmological argument from a man he accuses of having “turned away from God?”
That aside, strictly speaking, it would seem that Kristor's conceptualization of God fails the Kamal Cosmological Argument, at least as far as the appended premise and conclusion are concerned.
Craig's KCA argues for the reality of a God who is "timeless sans creation and temporal since the first moment of creation."
That is not what Kristor argues for. I guess that means he would regard Craig's conceptualization of God as a confusion, misdirection, and straw man. Still, that doesn't save his conceptualization of God from failing Craig's Kalam Cosmological Argument, strictly speaking.
So what gives?
I fully expect Kristor will respond in his usual wall-of-text form, defining this, qualifying that, refuting everything else, citing the Bible, all while referring to Aquinus, Anslem, Aristotle, Boethius, etc.
Anyway, I'll have more thoughts on the KCA in my next post.
End note: I find all of this to be a miserable business. Philosophy. Logic. Ultimately, word games that, in the end, prove nothing besides the penchant to draw closer to philosophy than to God.
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