Whatever God Wills Apart from Himself Must be Finite

God is an infinite being and His infinity is tied to His being uncreated. The reason why God is an infinite being is because He is pure existence and so has no limit on His being which would make Him finite. Furthermore, His being pure existence is the explanation of why He is uncreated is the absolute necessity of God is explained in virtue of the fact that He is pure existence and so cannot fail to exist; given this, since God’s absolute necessity is the explanation of why He is uncreated, the fundamental reason why He is uncreated is because He is pure existence itself. Since this is the case, in order to be uncreated, a thing must be existence itself. To go a bit deeper, to be existence itself is to have one’s existence be identical to one’s essence, which means that if one’s essence is distinct one’s existence, which is to say that one has their existence derivative, they would not be existence and so would, necessarily, be created. This entails that whatever is God wills apart from Himself must be finite as things that are willed apart from Himself have their being derivatively and so these things will have their existence be distinct from their essence. This entails that these things will be finite as in order to be infinite one must be pure existence itself, but these things aren’t as they have their being derivatively. So anything that God wills apart from Himself will, necessarily, be finite.

Comments

  1. The Engaged ThomistMarch 9, 2022 at 7:23 PM

    I'm glad you liked my post, but how does this relate to his objection?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Engaged ThomistMarch 10, 2022 at 1:23 PM

    Oh, I see now. That makes sense, thanks :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dominik KowalskiMarch 11, 2022 at 3:01 AM

    Let me add something to that, two points I have made in my defense and building of and upon Timothy O'Connor:

    1. There has to be some distinguishing factor that explains why the Existence is necessarily conjoined with the particular essence rather than another. If there isn't, the connection is brute, and thus contingent. If there is we have to identify that connection either in the essence or in some additional factor. Why? Existence broadly states the same, there is a basic sense in which God and creatures share a sense of existing. This doesn't mean they exist the same way, only that aspects are shared. Substance and accident exist in different ways, but on the most basic quantification they share that they are instead of nothing. This basic sameness is what leads me to believe that the reason for the necessity must be found in the essence or in the additional factor, e.g. the relation. But this can't be either. The essence is dependent upon existence and this asymmetry will be my second point later. For this reason the explanation for the necessity won't be found in the essence, it would require the pre-existence of the essence for it to be within the ultimate explanation. And even if we're Meinongians, the non-existent objects is causally ineffacious and won't by itself be connected to actuality. What this tells us is that essence as distinguishable from existence can't be as ontologically basic as existence.
    The same is with the relation being the explanation, we see that this suggestion falls prey to Bradley's regress. Given that the the relation between essence and existence just connects these things we need an explanation for why these three items are connected the way they are. A relation itself is just a statement of fact dependent upon the reality of the two other items. So we would require a further item in the mix that explains the unification but then we introduce additional relation which themselves require explanation, giving rise to Bradley's regress. Which let's us see that we require an underlying unifying factor, which I suggest just is existence. Which brings me to 2.

    2. As already stated existence to essence is an asymmetrical relation, every statement of fact about a particular concrete essence requires the reality of the essence i.e. it's existence. In that sense the contingent and the supposedly necessary essence exist in the same way, in that both aren't absolutely fundamental. In fact, on Thomism, this also makes the necessary essence contingent, since it's dependent even though it can't cease to be, comparable to the Intellect in Platonism.

    What we're left with is pretty much O'Connor's proposal, namely that essence is entailed by existence, existence being the underlying and unifying level that keeps the attributes deduced in the essence within one absolutely necessary being. Existence is then described by these entailed attributes and this is the only way to cash out a strong PSR. However for the personalist this foundation is shaky at best, since their own position is only defensible if we dogmatically affirm univocity. If the maximal attributes we deduce from existence being fundamental actually describe what absolute ultimacy is like, then we don't need the multitude of attributes, since all of them are unified in a deeper reality where they stem from something that is different but yet somewhat comparable from how the attributes are usually used.

    So honestly, even if we concede that there might be something like a distinction between essence and existence in the ultimate being, at least superficially, the pressure of requiring explanation hard forces us into the territory of simplicity

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