The No Real Relations Doctrine is No Big Deal

When people begin to learn more about Classical Theism and its central commitments, one of the doctrines that people find most striking is the No Real Relations Doctrine. This doctrine states that God is in no way really related to His effects, and it’s the basis for other doctrines like Divine Impassibility, that God can in no way be affected by Creation, and Divine Immutability, that God can in no way change. This doctrine seems so strange because it may not seem to make sense to say that a cause is in no way really related to its effects, but it may even cause spiritual trouble in those who mistake this doctrine to entail that God does not care about them, or love them in any way. These, however, are worries that rely on misunderstandings and when the proper points are clarified, these worries vanish.

It is first important to define what it means for two things to be really related: x and y are really related if and only if x acquires some new actuality by being in relation to y. In contrast, two things, x and y, are merely logically related if and only if x does not acquire some new actuality by being relation y. There can also be cases of mixed relations where x is really related to because it acquires some new actuality by being in relation to y, but y is merely logically related because it does not acquire a new actuality by being in relation to x.



With this in place, I think some worries about this doctrine may be cleared up. Classical Theists say that God is not really related to His effects, Creation, because He does not acquire any new actuality by bringing about His effects. This is not at all ad hoc, as it simply follows from powers ontology, which most if not all Classical Theists as well as many contemporary metaphysicians accept, that no cause is really related to its effect. On powers ontology, when a certain cause x brings about a given effect y, x, the cause which exercises its causal power to bring about y, does not change when it brings about y, and, therefore, x is not really related to y. To think of an example, when a person makes an indentation in a pillow, the person has exercised their causal power to make an indentation in the pillow, but there is no new actuality in the person from this, there is merely the new actuality, the indentation, in the pillow; here the cause, the person, is not really related to its effect, the indentation in the pillow. Moreover, this is a case of mixed relations as the person is merely logically related to the pillow, but the pillow is really related to the person because it gains the indentation from the person. Similarly, when God exercises His causal power to bring about Creation, He is not really related to Creation because there is no new actuality in God when He brings about Creation, but Creation is really related to God because it depends on God for its existence. Furthermore, God cannot acquire new actualities from Creation once Creation is brought about because God is unbounded being, or pure actuality, so there is no way that Creation, once it has begun to exist, could affect God in any way. 



Does all of this entail that God does not love His Creation? Absolutely not! In fact, in a somewhat paradoxical way, it actually gives us the knowledge that God Loves us perfectly; indeed, He Loves us into existence. Since God is pure actuality and can in no way be affected by anything, He cannot gain anything from Creation. So, when He brings about Creation, He does so completely gratuitously, and wholly for the sake of Creation: He wills the good of Creation, by bringing it into existence, for the sake of Creation, which satisfies the philosophical definition of love. So, by the very fact that you exist and God is causing you to exist, He is, quite literally, Loving you into being.


So, the No Real Relations Doctrine, should not be something to worry about. It is philosophically coherent, in-line with the best ontology of causation, powers ontology, and it grounds the fact that God Loves us: indeed, that He Loves us into being.

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