by John Ellis
There’s only been one time in my life when I’ve been legitimately asked “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”. By legitimately, I mean it wasn’t asked by a buddy goofing around. The question was condescendingly posed to me by a smirking college kid who overheard me and a friend discussing theology. His goal was to demonstrate the intellectual vapidity of Christianity.[1] At the time, over a decade ago, while considering myself fluent in the language of Christian apologetics, I wasn’t sure how to answer his question other than to utilize Proverbs 26:5’s urging to “answer a fool according to his folly.” So, I replied, “It depends on the type of dance.”
In a similar vein, but slightly less absurd, the question “can God create a rock too big for him to lift?” is occasionally puzzled over in coffee shops, small group discussions, and among seminarians three tumblers of cheap bourbon into their evening. “Can God create a square circle?” is a question that is more interesting and robust. It’s a query that seemingly possesses a cut-and-dried answer while existing outside the realm of the foolish but still in the same family of pocket-sized, coffeehouse philosophy as the previous two questions. It’s generally assumed that God, of course, can’t create a square circle. That would be a violation of the law of non-contradiction.
While a square circle is most definitely a violation of the law of non-contradiction, it’s important to pump the brakes on responding too quickly to that seemingly self-evident question. There are possible hidden assumptions in the answer that can make that question more negatively impactful than the other two questions. The question and answer can (but not necessarily) expose a grave theological/philosophical error with deeply embedded consequences that is unwittingly held by many Believers: the error of univocity of being.
If asked the first two questions, I would likely still respond in the vein of “answer a fool according to his folly” because those type of “gotcha” questions are rarely asked in good faith. But for Christians it’s important that we have a better understanding of how questions like that and their possible answers work. Too often, based on how we interact with these types of questions, Christians reveal that we’re reading our finiteness back into God while holding to a univocity of being. The question about whether God can create a square circle or not reveals this. Some 2,400 years ago, a much more sophisticated question dealing with God’s relation to the cosmos was introduced into philosophy. And a question that has taken many great thinkers (and not so great thinkers) down philosophical and theological paths of error.
While on his way to stand trial, Socrates, according to Plato, had a conversation about piety with Euthyphro. After knocking down Euthyphro’s three answers to his question “I adjure you to tell me the nature of piety and impiety. … What are they?”[2], Socrates confounds his travel companion with what is known as the Euthyphro dilemma: “The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.”[3]
Failing to solve the dilemma, Euthyphro begs off with, “Another time, Socrates; for I am in a hurry and must go now.”[4]
For his part, Socrates (Plato) ends the dialogue by sarcastically sighing after the retreating Euthyphro, “Alas! My companion, and will you leave me in despair? I was hoping that you would instruct me in the nature of piety and impiety so that I might have cleared myself of Meletus and his indictment. That I might have proved to him that I had been converted by Euthyphro, and had done with rash innovations and speculations, in which I had indulged through ignorance, and was about to lead a better life.”[5]
A couple of weeks later, Socrates died by (forced?) suicide. Thanks a lot, Euthyphro!
For the last 2,400 years, philosophers and theologians have continued to fall into the trap of the Euthyphro dilemma. How you answer Socrates’ question plays a large determinative role in your ontology and ethics. One influential philosopher – although most of us are largely unaware of his influence – that believed he’d solved the Euthyphro dilemma was Gottfried Leibniz.
Here’s a statement from Leibniz that on the surface likely resonates with Christians. However, I argue that it sits at the center of the error of univocity of being. I think it will also make clear which side of the Euthyphro dilemma the German philosopher landed on:
“Whence it follows that God, possessing supreme and infinite wisdom, acts in the most perfect manner, not only metaphysically but also morally speaking, and that, with respect to ourselves, we can say that the more enlightened and informed we are about God’s works, the more we will be disposed to find them excellent and in complete conformity with what we might have desired. Thus I am far removed from the opinion of those who maintain that there are no rules of goodness and perfection in the nature of things or in the ideas God has of them and who say that the works of God are good solely for the formal reason that God has made them. … Thus, in saying that things are not good by virtue of any rule of goodness but solely by virtue of the will of God, it seems to me that we unknowingly destroy all of God’s love and all his glory. … I also find completely strange the expression of some other philosophers[6] who say that the eternal truths of metaphysics and geometry and consequently the rules of goodness, justice, and perfection are merely the effects of the will of God.”[7]
While I believe it’s obvious to readers which side of the Euthyphro dilemma Leibniz believed was correct, his answer is complex and nuanced. It’s more than just, “the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy.” Leibniz’s entire metaphysics was built on his answer. The complexity of his system has thrown a deep shadow onto the metaphysic/ontology of many Christians in the West. This was (and possibly remains) true in my own faith journey. Recounting my journey may be a helpful entry point into Leibnizian thought and how it’s affected Christians in the West since the early 18th century.
A couple of years after becoming a Christian, I concluded that all reality is God’s thoughts. This is an iteration of rationalism that terminates in idealism.[8] Everything exists, I believed, because God is thinking everything. More than that, and problematically, I held to a position that saw reality as coterminous, at the least, with God’s thoughts. At the most, reality and God’s thoughts are synonymous within this position. I held to that metaphysic for several years. Discovering that it wasn’t unique to me caused me to hold on to it even more tightly (although my articulation of it was much less sophisticated than that of pretty much everyone else). One of the best-known proponents of that metaphysic is Leibniz. Noted Leibniz scholar Maria Rosa Antognazza distills his teaching by pointing out that, “reality meant for Leibniz first and foremost God, the eternal infinite Being encompassing all perfections. It is from him and his eternal thoughts that the story of the world in which we find ourselves begins. … God eternally thinks all possible beings, and this is what ultimately grounds the reality of those possible beings which exist only as thoughts or ideas.”[9] She later adds, “The reality of relations is ultimately grounded not in individual human minds thinking them, but in the Divine mind eternally thinking the ideas or essences of possible individuals, organized into the possible worlds in which these possible individuals are com-possible. … In brief, God is the ‘root’ of every reality.”[10]
My articulation of that metaphysic was much less formed and far more poorly articulated than Leibniz, of course, but it contained the same essence. However poor my articulation of it was contrasted with the genius of Leibniz’s thoughts, though, the overall point seems supported by Scripture.
“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Colossians 1:17
“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful world.” Hebrews 1:3
Those are just two verses among many that seem to support the belief that Leibniz’s metaphysic is biblically informed while also being rationally intuitive. But a problem sits at the center of most human expressions and interpretations of those verses (please note I said the problem is found in the human expressions/interpretations not in the verses themselves).[11]
About four-hundred years before Leibniz, the Scottish theologian and philosopher Duns Scotus developed the univocal concept of being. He was responding to what he believed was an error in Aquinas. In Thomism, to say that humans love and God loves is to make the claim that the love of humans is analogous to God’s love. Duns Scotus believed that this rendered God unknowable. He posited that being is the primary abstract concept. While God’s being is infinite and our being is finite, we share in the same abstract being as God. While God’s love is infinite and our love is finite, our love shares an essence with God’s love – and I’m using the scare word essence on purpose. For Duns Scotus, this is what makes it possible for humans to have knowledge of God. He was afraid that Thomism created too large of a transcendent divide between Creator and created.
I suspect that most of us unknowingly carry the two schools of thought in our mind without realizing the contradictory tension.[12] American evangelicals are quick to affirm that our love is analogous to God’s love while holding to a universal abstract of love that God possesses perfectly and we possess imperfectly. I’m going to circle back around to what I believe is the biblical position (it’s also what I believe is the answer to the Euthyphro dilemma)[13], but the question of how this plays into Leibniz’s contention that God eternally thinks all things into existence should be answered first.
Well, Leibniz posited a God that thinks beings into existence inside a reality that the created shares with the Creator. While God possesses being perfectly, Duns Scotus’ primary abstract concept is the reality we share with God – the reality God thinks us in; we have being, too.[14]
I’m working somewhat backwards here, but the atheist Ludwig Feuerbach wrote in The Essence of Christianity that, “Man is nothing without an object. … In the object which he contemplates, therefore, man becomes acquainted with himself; consciousness of the objective is the self-consciousness of man.” Feuerbach then goes on to claim, “The absolute to man is his own nature [emphasis kept].”[15]
With his book’s initial pages, Feuerbach is building up to his argument that humans have invented God. We’ve done so, according to Feuerbach, because we need an infinite object by which to understand our finiteness in ways that stretch our epistemological grasp into a necessarily invented infinity. In knowing God, we can know ourselves is the heart of his argument. Using his opaque words, “But religion, expressed generally, is consciousness of the infinite; thus it is and can be nothing else than the consciousness which man has of his own – not finite and limited, but infinite nature. … The consciousness of the infinite is nothing else than the consciousness of the infinity of the consciousness; or, in the consciousness of the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature.”[16]
Feuerbach didn’t believe in the infiniteness of human consciousness. He did believe that for the sake of human progress, humans need to believe it.[17] To get there – to convince ourselves of our infinite consciousness –, enabling us to reach for the stars, demands the invention of God. A Being by which we can shape our sense of self, purpose, and humanity’s ceiling of possibilities, so to speak.
The famed 19th century atheist provides us a window, although this isn’t what he intended, into the problem of univocity of being. Univocity of being has two central, related problems: 1. It sneakily encourages us to drift ever closer to the belief that we too can be like God. 2. It creates the ontological and epistemological foundation for shaping God in our image or in whatever image we want. While Feuerbach is the logical anthropological endgame for those who embrace univocity of being (just because it’s the logical endgame doesn’t mean everyone eventually lands there, to be clear), Leibniz’s system provides evidence of how these problems operate on the front end.
Most people’s knowledge of Leibniz likely comes courtesy of Voltaire. The French philosophe’s Candide is a merciless, blistering literary elbow to the face of Leibniz’s concept/belief that we live in the best of all possible worlds. To be clear, Leibniz was no naïve Pangloss; Voltaire straw manned the crap out of Leibniz.[18] Candide does not present an accurate portrayal of Leibniz’s complex system.
Anselm of Canterbury’s argument for the existence of God is a ready-made shortcut through the Leibnizian maze. In fact, Leibniz intentionally borrowed from the scholastic theologian and philosopher. Called the ontological argument, the central statement from Anselm’s Proslogion is that God is a being “of which no greater being can be conceived.” This perfect being – God – must exist as part of his perfection because if we can conceive of this perfect being in our mind than a being that exists in both our mind and reality would be more perfect than the one that only exists in our mind (rendering the being that only exists in our mind imperfect). Ergo, a perfect being – God – exists (there’s a fatal flaw in this argument that you can read about in this footnote – [19]).
So, Leibniz believed, “It also follows that the world is morally most perfect, since moral perfection is in reality physical perfection with respect to minds. From this it follows that the world is not only the most admirable machine, but insofar as it is made up of minds, it is also the best republic, the republic through which minds derive the greatest happiness and joy, in which their physical perfection consists.”[20]
Dr. Antognazza helpfully pulls together Leibniz’s beliefs in God’s perfection and that this is the best of all possible worlds by writing, “God being God, he is morally (although not logically or metaphysically) necessitated to choose the best.”[21] Bookmark that quote; I’m coming back to it.
This prompts a question, and a question Voltaire mockingly used in Candide after the devasting Lisbon earthquake in 1755: Does this – Leibniz’s claim that this is the best of all possible worlds – mean that the evils in this world are actually good? Leibniz would’ve responded, “no,” to that question, depending on how “good” is defined. In the next paragraph after the quote above, he begins to confront the question of theodicy (he actually invented the term and wrote a book titled Theodicy, in case you’re interested). In brief, Leibniz argued that if we could achieve the state of perfection that God possesses, we’d be able to see and understand the true meaning of goodness and happiness that God desires for his creation and how this world is the best of all the possible worlds for achieving God’s desire for his creation. There are a lot of threads that deserve to be pulled on here; I’ve oversimplified Leibniz’s theodicy in order to give it at least a brief voice for readers – I trust that some of my readers can intuitively see where some of those threads lead. But his theodicy isn’t where my thesis for this article lives. My thesis resides within Maria Rosa Antognazza’s quote from two paragraphs above that I asked you to bookmark: “God being God, he is morally (although not logically or metaphysically) necessitated to choose the best.”
That is an accurate assessment of Leibniz’s position. And it’s a position that wasn’t unique at the time (and isn’t unique now, which is the problem and why I’m writing). About a half-a-century before Leibniz wrote, Hugo Grotius dared exclaim, “Natural law is so unalterable that God himself cannot change it.” The eminent scholar Peter Gay goes on to point out, “Assuming that God did not exist, [Grotious] wrote, … the rules of natural law would retain their validity.”[22]
This gets worked out in Leibniz’s mind by the understanding that in thinking the best of all possible worlds, God cannot conceive/create a contradiction. God cannot create a square circle because that violates the law of non-contradiction. The rules of natural law and logic contain validity apart from God, to rephrase Grotius’ claim. As it turns out, Dun Scotus’ supreme abstract of being isn’t as supreme as originally conceived. Gay succinctly pointed out that during the Enlightenment (and the previous century), “With these pronouncements, natural law, which had occupied a subordinate place in the Christian scheme of things, made its declaration of independence.”[23] This is the logical path down which univocity of being treads.
In other words, and evincing the two problems of univocity of being, God isn’t wholly transcendent since he’s bound by laws that are outside of himself, just like we are. As Gotthold Lessing barked in a letter to his brother, “cowardly rationalists who aimed at making reasonable Christians only succeeded in making unreasonable philosophers.”[24]
When our answer to the question “can God create a square circle?” is “no, it violates the law of non-contradiction” we may be demonstrating that we have unwittingly adopted a metaphysic that reduces God to a lesser-than being, and a being with whom we share being. In our attempts to understand God, our finite language frequently steers us into an acceptance of the univocity of being. The philosophical tradition of the West has already made that road wide and smooth for us.
Now, there is a response to the question that seeks to acknowledge that creation reflects who God is. That answer states that the laws of logic reflect God’s character, and that God would violate his own character if he created a square circle. God cannot violate his own character; therefore, God cannot create a square circle.
While a better response, I think, I still believe it to be problematic (though on a much lesser scale). I agree with Lessing that, “However I try to explain the reality of things outside God, I have to confess that I can form no conception of it.”[25] Or, as Hamlet put it, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Beyond the narrative delight that comes with living in theology’s paradoxes, attempting to reason out questions like the square circle one comes with a cost produced by an anthropocentric shortsightedness.
Something that’s been impressed on me over the last few years is how the various philosophies approved by the so-called Christian worldview (Christendom) fail to account for the far-reaching deleterious effects of the Curse (Genesis 3:14-19). In contrast, and ironically, many of the philosophies reviled and rejected by the so-called Christian worldview demonstrate (unwittingly, to be clear) an understanding of the Curse’s effects on this world, including humanity.
Look, the laws of nature and logic that we tout are merely articulations of our finite and fallen observations of creation. Science isn’t static for a reason. Responding to the question about a square circle by pointing out that the laws of nature and logic reflect God’s character runs the risk of failing to adequately account for how far-reaching the deleterious effects of the Curse are. Maybe a square circle does violate God’s character. I’m not willing to say that it doesn’t, to be clear. We need to be careful about answering questions like the one at hand with epistemic certainty. A position of epistemic humility requires caution when declaring what God can and cannot do apart from what he’s revealed to us in his Word.
God acts in accordance with his nature – with who he is. There is an infinitude in that statement that is impossible for us to wrap our finite brains around. Attempts to do so inevitably terminate in dragging the infinite into the finite. Human language lacks the ability to define and articulate those aspects of God that are beyond our comprehension. This is displayed in the ways in which God has been defined via our fallen empirical observations of God’s creation. Making the stark, absolute claim that God cannot create a square circle evinces our belief that we have an unfettered, “God’s-eye” view of reality and possess the ability to apply our empirical observations to God’s infinitude. It assumes that we share in God’s being, that we are somehow like God. That’s the original sin: believing that we can be like God.
Soli Deo Gloria
[1] I do love irony.
[2] Plato, “Euthyphro” The Essential Plato trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1999), 484.
[3] Plato, “Euthyphro”, 490-491.
[4] Plato, “Euthyphro”, 501.
[5] Plato, “Euthyphro”, 501.
[6] In an earlier draft, Leibniz mentioned Descartes and Spinoza.
[7] G. W. Leibniz, “Discourse on Metaphysics” Discourse on Metaphysics and Other Essays trans. Daniel Garber and Roger Ariew (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991), 1-2.
[8] A cursory Google search of idealism will reveal claims that rationalism and idealism are at odds. While that may be true using specific definitions of the terms, it’s undeniable that later rationalists held to forms of idealism – think Spinoza, Leibniz, and even Kant and Hegel.
[9] Maria Rosa Antognazza, Leibniz: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016), 37, 40.
[10] Antognazza, Leibniz, 47-48.
[11] I feel like I need to add caveats to my qualifiers because of the number of people who willfully misinterpret what I write.
[12] This is the subject of my next Biblical Critical Theory article.
[13] Okay. I didn’t circle back around because doing so would’ve messed up the flow of the article. But it’s important, so: God IS love. He doesn’t possess love. He IS love. When we “love”, we’re demonstrating who God is; we’re not sharing with God in an abstract concept. This is at the core of my moral philosophy, which I’ve written some about in my Kingdom Ethics articles on this blog. This is also my response to the Euthyphro dilemma. My answer to Socrates would be “neither.” God IS good; it’s who he IS.
[14] For the last three years, I’ve been working on an article defining what I believe is a biblical ontology. For obvious reasons, I think, it’s not easy to write. My abstracts are running ahead of my ability to articulate them. Articles like this present one are helping me work backwards into those abstracts.
[15] Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity trans. George Eliot (New York: Harper Torch Books, 1957), 4-5.
[16] Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, 2-3.
[17] While important differences exist between Feuerbach and Comte, they both believed that religion was no longer necessary to modern, scientifically enlightened humanity.
[18] I used to love Candide. I still enjoy reading it. I first read it in an undergrad lit class. However, I’m not sure that it should be read in classes outside of a graduate level course that will take the time to think through Voltaire’s unfair treatment of Leibniz’s complex system. I think it’s pretty obvious from this article that I’m not a fan of Leibniz. I don’t care about Voltaire’s criticizing him. I care that he did so in a manner that is patently dishonest.
[19] The ontological argument contains the a priori belief that existence is a necessary and not a contingent predicate of perfection. The Benedictine monk Gaunilo of Marmoutiers was the first to expose this fatal error. Gaunilo posited a perfect island. For my part, I can conceive of the perfectly grilled porterhouse steak. But just because I can conceive of it doesn’t mean that it exists necessarily because existence is not generally assumed to be a necessary predicate of anything apart from the ontological argument. And it’s not generally assumed so because existence is not a predicate to begin with. Now, here’s where this gets really interesting and opaquely deep (and that also connects to my larger argument in this article): Can God not exist? … I’m not going to answer that because ultimately I can’t with a cogent, coherent argument that doesn’t fall into the trap of univocity of being (see the body of this article). I’ll just say this: sometimes a little fideism helps us appreciate the paradoxes of theology without needing to attempt to solve them or figure them out.
[20] Leibniz, “On the Ultimate Origination of Things” Discourse on Metaphysics and Other Essays trans. Daniel Garber and Roger Ariew (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991), 46.
[21] Antognazza, Leibniz, 65.
[22] Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: W.W. Norton Company, 1995), 299.
[23] Gay, The Enlightenment, 299-300.
[24] Gottfried Lessing, “To Karl Lessing, February 2, 1774” Schriften XVIII, 101.
[25] Gotthold Lessing, “On the Reality of Things Outside of God” Philosophical and Theological Writings trans. and ed. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 30.
Practically Known Theology 