Imagine the following scenario:

Philip and Samantha are considering two hypotheses, h1 and h2, that are causal explanations of some piece of evidence, e. The first hypothesis explains e in terms of a single ultimate cause, c1, while the second hypothesis explains e in terms of two ultimate causes, c2 and c3. Which hypothesis should they favour? Samantha appeals to the theoretical virtue of simplicity in favour of h1. But then Philip appeals to a rival theoretical virtue, namely complexity, in favour of h2. Samantha then goes on to defend her theoretical virtue by pointing out that reality is not infinitely complex, but clearly has a degree of simplicity. The theoretical virtue of simplicity is thus clearly grounded in the nature of reality. Philip agrees to some extent, but claims that the same is true for his theoretical virtue, because reality also has a degree of complexity. At this point, they get stuck and become unsure if they should favour the simpler hypothesis h1 or the slightly more complex hypothesis h2.

At first glance, there is no way to resolve this issue. Both supposed theoretical virtues seem to be rooted in the nature of reality. Reality is characterized by both simplicity and complexity. Hence, we cannot really decide if we should favour the simpler or the more complex hypothesis. But perhaps a close analysis of e and the causal explanations in question is a way out of this impasse?

There is indeed an interesting relationship between simplicity and causal sufficiency, on the one hand, and complexity and causal insufficiency, on the other. If c1 were a sufficient cause of e, then, plausibly, e would have no other causes. After all, the entirety of e would be caused by c1, leaving no room for other causes. Its entire existence would be derived from c1. Consider the following analogy: If you paint your entire room blue, then no space is left for someone else to do part of the painting; you have already done it all. The causation of e by c1 would be ‘complete’ and ‘exclusive’ in a similar way. The sufficiency of c1’s causation of e would rule out the complexity of multiple causes. On the other hand, if we could locate a feature of e that could not be caused by c1, then this would be a sign that e has other causes as well, on the assumption that all of e has a cause.

But this does not get us very far. After all, what if we cannot discover whether or not e has a feature that could not be caused by c1? Then we must consider if c1 carries within it the principle of its own existence. Without it, c1 could not be the sufficient cause of e, since something else would be needed in addition to c1 for e to exist. But suppose that both hypotheses indicate that the causes they invoke are self-explained in such a way. Then we are left with (at least) two options: (1) introduce additional pieces of evidence in favor of the hypothesis, or (2) highlight how the hypothesis explains the falisity of its rival. Whether these avenues will be sufficient to resolve the debate is however unclear. Perhaps in the end the discussion will turn on who has the better candidate(s) for an ultimate reality (c1 vs. c2 & c3). As you can tell, I am still thinking through these issues.

Patrick Flynn. The Best Argument for God. Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2023. 261 pp. pb. $21.95 ISBN 978-1-64413-780-2.

According to Graham Oppy, a formidable atheistic philosopher, the best available argument about whether or not God exists is a cumulative argument in favour of naturalism. Oppy presents this argument in his 2013 book, The Best Argument Against God. In a simplified form, the argument is as follows: (a) naturalism is simpler than theism, (b) theism does not have an explanatory advantage over naturalism, (c) therefore, naturalism is the better theory of reality. In many ways, Patrick Flynn’s The Best Argument for God is a response to Oppy and this sort of case for naturalism. Drawing on a range of Christian philosophers, including Joshua Rasmussen, Robert Koons, Kenny Pearce, Alexander Pruss and Edward Feser, Flynn seeks to reverse the argument: Theism is simpler than naturalism, is able to explain more things, and explains some things in a less complicated way than naturalism (7-9, 123). To be clear, Pat Flynn primarily has classical theism in view here. According to classical theism, God is the purely actual first cause of all causable things, exists necessarily, and is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good (8).

Naturalism, on the other hand, is more difficult to define. A core claim of naturalism, for Flynn, is that fundamental reality (if there such a thing) is mindless and impersonal (9). This would allow for a range of impersonal ultimates, including absolute simples such as ‘the One’ of Neoplatonism, to fall under the heading of naturalism. However, the focus of the book is on versions of naturalism in which the foundation of reality is also ‘material’ or ‘physical’ in some sense. Also, for Flynn, a naturalistic foundation is characterized by indifference (125). This seems to leave out naturalistic versions of purposivism and axiarchism (e.g. Philip Goff, Why? The Purpose of the Universe, 2023). Although, to be fair, he does briefly interact with such views (e.g. 114-115).

Flynn takes two approaches to arguing for classical theism. First, he argues that God is, in effect, the only possible explanation of reality (31-90). This straightforward approach harkens back to traditional ‘proofs’ of God’s existence, such as found in the writings of Thomas Aquinas and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (cf. Edward Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God, 2017). But Flynn then goes on to use a more recent approach to arguing for God, namely ‘worldview comparison’ and ‘inference to the best explanation’. This involves comparing the simplicity and explanatory power of theories to determine which is the best. Here classical theism must beat naturalism on the basis of its theoretical merits. Although I will focus on this second approach, it is important to note that Flynn’s combination of approaches is fairly unique, and makes for an interesting read.

With regards to simplicity, Flynn argues that classical theism is simpler than naturalism, because it has only one fundamental entity, God, on whom everything else depends. Moreover, given divine simplicity, God is far more simple than any physical entity (102-111). Now, theism does seem to have advantages in this area. But Oppy has also raised important issues with regards to grounding mathematical and moral truths in God (e.g. Oppy, 2013, 38-45). For instance, it is difficult to see how the moral realm could be wholly dependent on God. It seems God cannot be ontologically prior to the moral realm, since God ‘always already’ has moral properties, or, if you prefer, is intrinsically good. As Flynn himself indicates, goodness exists at the foundation of reality (162). However, this seems to imply that God is not the sole foundational reality. Solving this by reducing goodness to God or to ‘being’ (cf. 83-84, 103) is problematic. On the one hand, the many creaturely goods can neither be identical to, nor have or be parts of, the simple God. On the other hand, it appears some evil positively exists, i.e. is not an absence of being. Thus it seems goodness is neither identical to being or God.

Further, Flynn makes important points about the explanatory and predictive power of theism when it comes to things like contingency, cosmic finetuning, knowledge, consciousness, morality, suffering and evil (123-240). Indeed, it is difficult to account for these with ‘bare’ naturalism alone. For example, to explain something like cosmic finetuning the naturalist needs a much more sophisticated theory. Thus it is understandable that Flynn argues that, to keep up with theism in the explanatory race, naturalism needs to introduce a lot of complexity, which, in turn, weakens its claim to being the simpler theory. Moreover, for him, naturalism ultimately fails to keep up; theism is able to explain more (123). However, Flynn arguably does not spend enough time explaining how God’s freedom and omnipotence factor into the equation (cf. Oppy, 2013, 27-30). If God can create millions of different universes, including lifeless ones, it seems the likelihood of our specific universe resulting from God’s creative action is greatly reduced. In other words, given theism, our world is unlikely. So perhaps we should think that God can create any universe He chooses to, but also that there are only a (very) select number of universes that God would choose to create. But then it seems that most universes are only theoretical possibilities for God, i.e. God cannot really make them. Similar issues arise with regards to creaturely consciousness, knowledge, reason, etc. Can God really make a universe without them?

Despite such lingering questions, The Best Argument for God is very much worth reading. It is one of the best recent apologetic books for a more general audience. Its informal tone gives the book a popular feel, but it is clearly rooted in academic philosophy and blends Thomistic and contemporary ideas in an interesting way. Perhaps it is best suited for readers who have advanced beyond popular apologetics and are eager to discover contemporary philosophy of religion. In many ways, Pat Flynn provides a clear and helpful introduction to the field from a Christian perspective. Furthermore, I am supportive of Flynn’s overall approach to arguing for God’s existence, especially when it takes the form of identifying advantages of theism as a theory of the first cause. I also very much appreciate his engagement with Graham Oppy, Paul Draper and other atheist philosophers. This is highly important. For Christian apologetics to be credible, it must arguably engage not only with popular objections, but also with the best arguments the other side has to offer.

Introduction

The following argument is an objection to divine simplicity. Admittedly, the objection is not very rigorous nor need it sway a Thomist or other classical theist. I myself am somewhat sympathetic to the idea that the ultimate or most foundational reality must be metaphysically simple. But I am nevertheless curious about how classical theists would respond to this objection to divine simplicity.

Argument

1. Objects that are similar share a common part.
2. God has no parts. [divine simplicity]
3. If (1) and (2), then God is not similar to something else.
4. God is similar to creatures in a various ways.
5. Therefore, God is and is not similar to something else. [from 1-4, contradiction]

Defense of the premises

The view stated in premise 1 is a straightforward way of making sense of similarities between objects. Why is table A similar to table B? Because they have something in common (e.g. their shape). Premise 2 is a straightforward way of articulating the doctrine of divine simplicity, according to which God has neither physical nor metaphysical parts. Premise 3 seems to be pretty clearly true. If God has no parts, then God cannot have a part in common with something else. But, given premise 1, then God cannot be similar to something else. To deny premise 4 is very costly, since there are pretty obvious ways in which God is (or would be) similar to (some) creatures. For example, God has power and (some) creatures have power. God causes things to happen and (some) creatures cause things to happen. Moreover, analogical predication of God presupposes similarity. One cannot be analogous to something without being similar to it. Thus, (much of) our language could only apply equivocally to God, if God is not similar to anything else.

Conclusion

Lastly, the conclusion follows pretty straigthforwardly from the premises. From premises 1-3 it follows that God is not similar to something else. But it follows from premise 4 that God is similar to something else. However, this is a contradiction. Thus, assuming the argument is valid, we must either allow for true contradictions or deny one of the premises. Given that this is not a true condradiction and assuming that the other premises are true, it follows that premise 2 is false. But if premise 2 is false, then the doctrine of divine simplicity is (arguably) false.

Four Views on Christian Metaphysics. Timothy M. Mosteller (editor). Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022. 142 pp. pb. $23.00 ISBN 978-1-7252-7330-6

This short book provides an interesting introduction to contemporary Christian views on metaphysics, the field of philosophy that explores the fundamental nature of reality. In the book four Christian philosophers outline their views and respond to the contributions and criticisms of their peers. Paul Gould starts off the conversation by presenting a form of Christian Platonism (1-19). On this view, God is the sole ultimate reality who created the world through a creative act with three logical moments. First, by a spontaneous movement of the divine intellect, God dreamt up all the creaturely possibilities, including possible individuals and possible worlds. As a logical consequence of the first step, God created the abstract objects (e.g. properties) that exist in the Platonic realm. After this, God freely and deliberately created the physical universe. This universe contains concrete things that have properties (step 2) and participate in God by means of the divine ideas (step 1). Among these concreta are human beings which are immaterial souls that have a material body as a distinct part of themselves. The reason for creation, Gould suggests, may be to manifest the divine goodness. To the degree that creatures are like their Creator, God’s goodness is communicated via them. In defense of his view that there are abstract objects in addition to divine ideas, Gould notes that properties, unlike thoughts, are not intentional. He further argues that Platonic properties offer the best solution to the problem of explaining similarities and qualities in the universe (25, 29). Some difficulties, however, remain. For instance, it’s not clear that God’s attributes, which seem to involve a whole host of minor properties, leave much room for the created properties of the Platonic realm.

Christian Aristotelianism is the next view in the book and is represented by Timothy Jacobs (35-53). Jacobs clarifies that the Aristotelian forms are descriptions or predicates of subjects and not (contrary to Plato) real objects. They exist in union with matter (hylomorphism). He distinguishes between accidental and substantial change and notes that prime matter persists even when the substantial form of a thing is changed. Human beings are made up of body (matter) and soul (substantial form). However, any substantial form that includes the vegetative power is a soul, thus even plants and animals have souls. Of course, people have additional powers, including reason which sets us apart from other living beings. Moving beyond Aristotle by means of Aquinas, Jacobs argues that the human soul can survive the death of the body. Further, according to Aquinas, all creatures are composites of essence and existence and therefore depend on God in whom there is no distinction between the two. The simple and single divine substance does, however, have three inherent relations, and is thus triune. Divine simplicity is an interesting point of disagreement between Jacobs and Gould, who holds that God is a composite being, so it is unfortunate that Jacobs’s defense of the doctrine is rather brief due to space limitations (66-67).

After this, James Spiegel articulates a form of Christian Idealism that relies heavily on George Berkeley (71-87). On this view, reality consists of minds and ideas. There are two sorts of minds: the divine mind and creaturely minds. Ordinary objects, such as apples and chairs, are bundles of sensible qualities (i.e. ideas) that are perceived by minds. Indeed, the entire physical world is actually a sort of language that the divine mind creates to communicate with creaturely minds. The ‘laws of nature’ might thus also be termed the syntactical rules of God. Human beings are made up of a soul (mind) and a bundle of perceivable properties (body). This anthropological account is thus strikingly different from that of Gould and Jacobs. It also allows for a very intimate relationship between human beings and God, since we literally interact with divine ideas on a daily basis. However, one of the problems with Spiegel’s overall view is that the nature of properties is rather murky. If properties just are ideas, then what distinguishes the finite minds from each other and God given that minds are ontologically prior to ideas? Arguably, Christian Idealism needs another ontological category besides minds and ideas.

Sam Welbaum closes the book with a chapter on Christian metaphysics and postmodernism (103-138). He first sketches the history of Western philosophy to explain postmodernism and its relationship to classical thought and modernity. Then he develops a view making use of a Heideggerian distinction between the ontic, external (material) world, and the ontological, the (experiential) world(s) of meaning. For the postmodernist, it is primarily the ontological world that is of interest. Human beings construct and inhabit these subjective worlds, and have limited access to the world as it is in itself. However, the Christian postmodernist believes that it is possible for us come more in line with the objective world created by God and with God’s correct interpretation of reality. The metaphysical specifics of God, human beings and the created world are unfortunately left a bit vague, and the other contributors are rightly critical of Welbaum. His voice is nevertheless important, since many people today, both inside and outside the church, treat metaphysics similarly. We must also bear in mind that Welbaum does not have an easy task, since postmodernism is not only broad, but also concerned more with experience, value and epistemology, than with traditional metaphysical questions. In conclusion, Four Views on Christian Metaphysics is an interesting introduction to metaphysics from a Christian perspective. The book is too short to be fully satisfying, both the individual contributions as well as the responses leave various issues unaddressed, but each chapter provides readers with a list of literature and can function as a doorway to more developed versions of the views presented in the book. Moreover, the book allows readers to quickly become acquainted with important areas of metaphysical discussion and to witness representatives of different philosophical schools (constructively) engaging each other’s views and arguments.

One way to push back against the idea of a mindless first cause is on the basis of the principle that ‘minds cannot come from nonminds’. This principle is somewhat plausible. It is at least difficult to see how the mental can be constructed from, or otherwise caused by, nonmental entities. If we the trace the causal history of minds back to a first cause, then this seems to indicate that it too must be a mind:

1. The first cause is the ultimate cause of minds.
2. Minds cannot come from nonminds.
3. If the first cause is not a nonmind, then the first cause is a mind.
4. Therefore, the first cause is a mind.

There are many candidates for the position of ultimate being: a naturalistic first cause, the God of perfect being theism, ‘the Good’ of Platonism, ‘the One’ of Neoplatonism, the fundamental mind of Idealism, etc. On the supposition that there is an ultimate being, we are thus faced with an a tricky question: Why is potential ultimate x the ultimate being and not potential ultimate y? It seems that x must have a distinctive feature that the other potential ultimates do not have if we are to make sense of this. But it cannot be any old distinctive feature. Potential ultimate z might be the only potential ultimate that is blue, but this distinctive feature of z would hardly explain why z is the ultimate being and the other candidates are not.

Now, it seems that perfection may be the sort of feature that we need, i.e. might be a feature that is both distinctive and explanatory. Perfection is plausibly unique-making (perfection may well entail being the greatest possible being) and ultimate-making (ultimacy is the sort of property a perfect being would have). Imperfection is quite unlike perfection in this regard. Not only are many potential ultimates seemingly imperfect, there is also no clear route from imperfection to ultimacy. Ultimate explanations that appeal to imperfect ultimates are thus, all else being equal, at an an explanatory disadvantage. They need some further feature f to explain why their candidate is ultimate and the rest is not.

Suppose there is a first cause (i.e. a first, uncaused member of a causal series) of all caused reality. This being clearly has some degree of power. Otherwise it could not have caused all of causal reality. To avoid the conclusion that it has some aribtrary degree of power, a conclusion which is problematic because the arbitrary limit in power is not externally caused and thus difficult to explain, we might want to say that the power of the first cause is maximal. But if the first cause has maximal power, then, arguably, the first cause is perfect. One way of reasoning to this conclusion is roughly as follows:

1. The first cause has maximal power.
2. Maximal power is the least limited form of possible power.
3. The (possible) power to be completely perfect is less limited than the (possible) power to be (partially) imperfect.
4. If (2) and (3), then maximal power includes the power to be completely perfect.
5. Only a completly perfect being is able to be completely perfect.
6. Therefore, the first cause is completely perfect.

This argument is inspired by Aquinas’s talk of the ‘First Good’, and in some ways builds on my first cause argument from 2021:

1. To cause, or to be able to cause, goodness is good.
2. So, goodness cannot come into existence from nongoodness. [from 1]
3. There is something, g, that is good and has come into existence.
4. So, there has always been something that is good. [from 2 and 3]
5. There are only a finite number of prior states of reality. / The causal sequence of g cannot be infinte.
6. Therefore, there is a first good, G. [from 4 and 5]
7. G is uncaused.
8. If a greater good were metaphysically possible, then there is a cause for why G exists instead of it.
9. Therefore, there is no metaphysically possible that is greater than G. [from 7 and 8]
10. There is no other good as good as G.
11. Therefore, G is the greatest good that is metaphysically possible. [from 9 and 10]
12. The greatest good that is metaphysically possible is perfect.
13. Therefore, G is perfect. [from 11 and 12]

There seem to be contigent beings, beings that do not exist necessarily, that do not exist in every possible version of reality. Let us, at least for the sake of argument, suppose there are such beings. Why then do they exist? This cannot be explained simply in terms of a necessary first cause. After all, the necessary first cause could, it seems, have caused everything necessarily. Then there would have been other beings besides the first cause, but none of them would have been contigent. That the first cause has caused contigent beings is thus something seemingly in need of explanation. Perfect being theism is perhaps able to offer such an explanation along the following lines: (1) the necessary first cause is perfect, and (2) a perfect being would (be able to) cause contigent beings.

A similar issue is that of contigent actions. It seems at least some of our actions are contigent. We didn’t have to do them, we were free to do otherwise. If we have the power to act freely, then this is something remarkable, why would we have such a power at all? It is not immediately obvious why a naturalistic necessary first cause would cause beings with such a power. But it seems that perfect being theism can explain this: We are ultimately caused by a perfect God, who wanted there to be creatures with a (limited) power to act freely in the world.

A problem with some Anselmian ontological arguments is bridging the gap between God existing in the mind and God existing in reality. Perhaps this argument, or something like it avoids this problem:

1. There is something in reality which is also the highest object of human thought.
2. The highest object of human thought is that than which nothing greater can be conceived.
3. God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived.
4. Therefore, God exists.