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We’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at arguments for God’s existence.
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But we haven’t said much yet about this God.
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Like, what’s he like? Is he a he?
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Is he like strictly Marvel superheroes, or is he more of a DC guy?
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Does he prefer his salsa with or without cilantro? I like corn!
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Who’s his favorite Crystal Gem from Steven Universe?
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I guess those kinds of questions would only apply to a heavily personalized and anthropomorphic God.
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But the traditional picture of God – the one accepted, and even assumed, throughout
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Judeo-Christian tradition, up into modern times – is what we might call an “omni-God,”
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possessing particular divine attributes – the characteristics believed to be held by God.
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Now let’s pause a moment to acknowledge that this discussion is of one particular God,
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the one who stars in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptures.
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Of course, lots of people believe in lots of other gods, and they all have attributes of their own.
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We’re focusing on this god because he’s the one all these philosophers we’ve been studying
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were talking about – he’s the one they believed – or didn’t believe – in.
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Philosophers like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas – who were themselves influenced by the
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writings of Plato and Aristotle – came up with a general set of divine attributes that
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are still widely held today among theists.
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And in this view, God is omniscient, which means he knows everything that can be known.
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And he’s also omnipotent, or all-powerful.
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He’s been said to be omnibenevolent, or possessing perfect goodness.
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And he’s omnitemporal and omnipresent – meaning he exists at all places and all times at once.
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Now, it’s worth noting that none of these attributes is actually mentioned in the Bible.
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But philosophers like Aquinas reasoned that they must be the case, if God is perfect.
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And these philosophers took it as a given that he is.
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The problem is, a close investigation of these attributes reveals some rather tricky little puzzles.
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No, I take that back. They’re really, really, big puzzles.
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[Theme Music]
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Can God create a rock so heavy he can’t lift it?
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– is just one of an infinite number of unanswerable questions that can be asked about God.
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Like, if God is omnipotent, he has to be able to create something so heavy he can’t lift it.
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Otherwise, his inability to create it would mean there’s at least one thing he couldn’t do.
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But then, he wouldn’t be omnipotent, because if he were truly all-powerful, he’d be able to lift anything.
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Quandaries like this come up all the time when you consider the divine attributes.
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And some of the questions that arise are not only about God, but also about us.
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For instance, if God knows everything, then he also knows the future, right?
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Which makes sense, if he’s also omnitemporal, because that would mean that he’s already in the future.
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And also in the past. And don’t forget the present.
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But many theists also believe that God gave us free will.
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So, how can we be free, if God already knows what we’re gonna do? In that case, are we really free?
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Or is freedom just an illusion that he created for us, to make us feel like we’re in control?
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What we’re seeing here is that, at least on the surface, God’s traditional divine
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attributes are internally inconsistent – meaning, they can’t all be true at the same time.
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And what do you do when you hold inconsistent beliefs?
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Well, if you’re being philosophically rational, you either give some of them up, or you figure
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out a way to understand them that makes them consistent.
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This is what a theist who believes in the omni-God has to do.
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Let’s think about the contradiction that arises from believing the following propositions:
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1) God is omniscient 2) Humans have free will
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Is there any way to resolve this contradiction, or do we have to surrender one of those beliefs?
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One possible response is to say that knowledge and causation aren’t the same thing.
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So God might know that we’re going to do something, without actually causing us to do it.
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This actually makes sense, if you think about it.
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Imagine a person standing on a cliff looking down on a train track that curves around a bend.
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From her vantage point, the onlooker can see that, just on the other side of the bend,
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a person is stuck on the track as the train approaches.
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Too far away to do anything, the onlooker knows the accident will happen before it does,
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but the fact that she knows it will happen doesn’t mean that she caused it to happen.
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To use a less gruesome example, if God knew you were going to eat an entire pecan pie
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by yourself over the course of a lonely weekend, that doesn’t mean that he caused you to do it.
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That was all on you.
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But wait. If God is omniscient, then he can’t be wrong, can he?
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Because if he was ever wrong, then there would have been something he didn’t know.
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So if God knew you were going to eat the whole pie, then you couldn’t not eat the pie,
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because if you decided not to at the last minute, then you would have just proven God wrong,
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thereby single-handedly stripping him of his divine omniscience! Good job!
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So the knowledge and power of God are, to say the least, philosophically perplexing.
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Now let’s consider another question about God’s personal skill set: Can God sin?
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If he’s omnipotent, it would seem that he can, because he can do anything.
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But if he’s omnibenevolent, or inherently good, then it would seem that he can’t.
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This doctrine, which says that God can’t sin, is known as divine impeccability.
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But if God is impeccable and incapable of sin, then doesn’t that mean that he is not omnipotent?
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After all, I can sin...easily.
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I mean, gimme five minutes and I can probably break two or three commandments.
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Like, the ones about coveting stuff -- not the murdery ones.
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But still, it seems kinda weird to think that I can do something that God can’t.
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Some people try to solve this particular puzzle by saying that sin is necessarily a failure,
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so therefore, a perfect being can’t do it.
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Others say that, even though God might do something that would be a sin if a human did it,
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the idea of ‘sin’ simply doesn’t apply to God. Perhaps because, given his omnibenevolence,
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everything God does is inherently good.
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Now, many philosophers find this solution troubling, because it kinda makes God’s goodness vacuous.
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After all, it basically means that saying “God did a thing” would be the same thing
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as saying “God did a good thing,” because ipso facto, anything God does is good.
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And if that’s the case, then his goodness doesn’t have any real meaning.
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Yet another possible contradiction presents itself in the belief that the omni-God is also a personal God.
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Many people find it difficult to suppose that God could be omnitemporal and omniscient,
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yet still have a personal relationship with his creatures.
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It’s hard to understand how God could relate to us – or feel the way we feel –
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if he doesn’t experience time as we do: If he already knows what’s going to happen,
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how could he ever be surprised, or change his mind?
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And if god is omnitemporal, is it even possible that he could be moved to respond to our prayers?
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Let’s look at this idea up close in this week’s Flash Philosophy. To the Thought Bubble!
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When people talk about praying for something to happen, or to not happen, or are otherwise
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making a request of God, they’re making what are known as petitionary prayers.
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When you pray in this way, you’re asking God for something – to help you pass a test,
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or to save a loved one who’s in danger, or to make sure the Patriots win the game.
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Contemporary American philosopher Eleanor Stump argues that we have no reason to think
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that asking God for something would actually make a difference.
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She thinks about it like this: If God knows everything, including the future
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– which he does, if he’s omniscient –
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– and if God has the power to bring about any state of affairs – which he does, if he’s omnipotent –
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– and if he always wants to bring about the best state of affairs – which he does, if he’s omnibenevolent –
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– then God has already decided what’s going to happen in every single case. To everyone. Always.
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So either your prayer is asking God to do something he was already going to do, in which
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case your prayer was kind of a waste of time.
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Or your prayer is asking God to do something he has already decided not to do, because
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it wasn’t actually the best thing. Sorry Patriots.
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And in that case, even if God would change his mind, based on your prayer, you wouldn’t
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want him to, because it would actually make things worse than they would’ve been if
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you’d just let God do his thing.
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In other words, if God knows what’s best, why would you want to change his mind?!
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Now, Stump suggests that there might be some value in the asking, even if the prayer doesn’t
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actually change what’s going to happen. Maybe you agree with her.
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But at this point, it should be clear just how many problems there are in the divine
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attributes, when you think about them. Thanks, Thought Bubble!
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Thomas Aquinas – the thinker who’s largely responsible for the traditional divine attributes
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we think of today – responded to these sorts of puzzles by saying that all of this speculation
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of What God Is Like is just analogical predication.
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Basically, Aquinas said that we can’t predicate, or assert, anything about God,
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because he’s so far beyond our understanding.
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When we speak of God, Aquinas said, we never say anything that’s true.
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Instead, we have to speak entirely in analogies, because that’s all we can do.
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So, God isn’t literally our father, for example, but we can understand his role for us as being father-like.
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Because that’s as close as we can get to really understanding what what he is.
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Or think of it this way: People in south Florida might say it’s cold when the temperature
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dips into the fifties, but in Alaska, it’s not cold until it’s well below zero.
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But both of those frames of reference are more similar to each other than they are to
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the cold that is absolute zero, which is about negative 273 degrees celsius.
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You might even say that absolute-zero cold and negative 10-degree cold are not even the same thing.
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But we use the one word – “cold” – to describe them both, as a kind of analogical
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way of talking about something that defies our complete and personal understanding.
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So, Aquinas basically said not to worry about all of these puzzles, because none of these
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things we say about God is more than an approximation – a little analogue that our tiny little
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minds can come up with, so that we can talk about an infinite being.
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Now, there are other thinkers, particularly in modern times, who point out that none of
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the traditional divine attributes is in the Bible anyway. So, maybe God isn’t an omni-God.
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Maybe he’s more like a superhero. He can be way smarter than us, way more powerful
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than us, way more good than us. But still not perfect.
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This seems like sacrilege to a lot of people, but some philosophers argue that it’s more
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compatible with the God of the Bible.
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After all, in the Bible, we see God doing very human things, like walking in the garden,
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getting angry, being surprised, and changing his mind.
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So, it could be possible that God actually does hate cilantro or is a big fan of Amethyst.
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That’s the kind of stuff that we, as philosophers, get to ponder – kindly and thoughtfully in the comments.
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Today we learned about the traditional divine attributes - omnipotence, omniscience, omnitemporality,
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and omnibenevolence - and the puzzles that they create for our understanding of God.
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We also explored some possible solutions to those puzzles, from Aquinas’ ideas of analogical
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predication, to the work of Eleanor Stump.
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Crash Course Philosophy is produced in association with PBS Digital Studios. You can head over
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This episode of Crash Course was filmed in the Doctor Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio
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with the help of all of these awesome people and our equally fantastic graphics team is Thought Cafe.
