Phil 743: Philosophy of Religion 2 – Euteleology
October 21, 2014
Plan for the session:
- A critical examination of John Bishop and Ken Perszyk’s “Divine action beyond the personal
OmniGod”
- We will outline and then critically discuss together each section (with II and III together)
- I (John Wilcox) have noted some potential objections to their account under “Potential
objections”
Background to the paper:
- Dissatisfaction with the personal omniGod (POG) conception of God as “a person, without a
body, who is creator and sustainer of all else that exists and who is supremely powerful,
knowing and good (omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent)”1
o This conception is taken to be inadequate on the basis of a “normatively-relativised,
logical argument from evil”2
 Given the theist’s typical ethical commitments, a being who causes and
sustains horrific suffering is not morally perfect since this would not involve
the “most perfectly loving kind of relationship”3
General outline of the article:
- Central question:
o “[W]hether the claimed inadequacies of the personal omniGod conception indicate
that it represents a false direction in the search for understanding, or, rather, merely
arise from its falling short of full comprehensibility, as even our best positive
conception must do”4
o “To answer this question, we need a better sense of what the potential alternatives
are” and so they “undertake some comparison of personal-omniGod-theism with a
certain kind of non-personal alternative (which we call the ‘euteleological’
conception) by focusing on the topic of divine action.”5
- Implicit conclusion:
o There are good chances that euteleology offers a more promising approach to divine
action than the POG conception
- Section I: Potential inadequacies of the POG account of divine action
- Section II: Euteleological conception
- Section III: Response to objections against the euteleological conception
- Section IV: Euteleological account of divine action
Section I: Potential inadequacies of the POG account of divine action
- Conclusion:
o The “standard picture of divine action is far from straightforward.”6
o Interpretation: there are problems for the POG account of divine action which justify
a consideration of alternative conceptions
John Bishop and Ken Perszyk, “Divine action beyond the personal omniGod”, vol. 5 in Oxford Studies in
Philosophy of Religion, ed. Jonathan Kvanvig (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 1.
2
See John Bishop and Ken Perszyk, “The normatively relativised logical argument from evil,” International
Journal for Philosophy of Religion 70, no. 2 (2011): 109-126.
3
Bishop and Perszyk, “Divine Action,” 1.
4
Ibid., 3.
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid, 3 and 4.
1
1
-
-
-
-
Argument from the contestability of divine agent-causation:
o According to the POG account, God is a supernatural, immaterial, disembodied being
o So divine action in creating the universe is the causation of an agent or, in other
words, the agent-causation of a disembodied being
o Divine agent-causation involves an ontologically irreducible relation (meaning it
cannot be reduced to the natural order) which is controversial
 The motivation for the divine agent-causation account presumably rests on an
analogy with human agent-causation
 But the basis for the analogy – human agent-causation – is disputable and
may in fact have arisen from analogising human action to divine action
 (Human agent-causation is disputable because of the problems
associated with dualism, e.g. such as the causal problem of how a
non-physical substance can have physical effects)
Argument from incoherence with divine uniqueness:
o If the POG conception is true, then God has an agent-causal relation with items in the
universe, just like other items in the universe
o If God has such a relation, then God is an item in the universe among other items
o God’s divine uniqueness entail that God is not an item in the world among other
items
o So the POG conception is inconsistent with God’s uniqueness
Potential objections:
o Objection re the first argument: They have not given sufficient reason for
dissatisfaction with disembodied, dualistic causation (even if it is implausible)
o Objection re the second argument:
 In one sense, any conception of God is going to have similarities with the
universe or (some of) its contents, whether having existence, being a telos or
being inconceivable (like colour to a colour-blind person)
 Therefore, to claim that God is insufficiently unique just because God has
one similarity, an agent-causation relation, sets up an impossible standard for
any conception to meet and invites the objection that Bishop and Perszyk
arbitrarily allow one similarity (being a telos) but not another (having an
agent-causal relation)
Discussion Question:
o Are their arguments compelling and do they establish their conclusion?
Section II: Euteleological conception
- Their conception:
o God is the universe’s telos (purpose, end, goal or final cause) which explains its
existence
o The POG conception only offers a substantive explanation of the universe’s existence
when God’s purpose in creating is specified
o The purpose is typically taken to be realisation of the supreme good – perfectly
loving relationships amongst God and his creatures
o (So why not keep the telos and do away with the telos-giver?)
- Objection: explanation also invokes an efficient cause, i.e. productive cause
- Response:
o The doctrine of creation ex nihilo may mean that there is no productive cause
o This euteleology is unique since it is thus not reducible to a causal explanation
o Any theological explanation will be unique in some sense and this is one of them
2
Section III: Response to objections against the euteleological conception
- Objection:
o Either God is distinct from the universe or he is not
o If he is distinct from the universe, then he is a supernatural creator with an agentcausal relation to the universe like other items
o If he is not distinct from the universe, then he is pantheistic, too naturalistic and not
transcendent
- Response:
o Euteleology is not pantheistic since God is the universe’s telos and the telos is not the
same as the universe itself, so God would not simply be the universe
o God is transcendent and not too naturalistic since, like any telos, God transcends the
system, perhaps like an abstract ideal
- Rebuttal: If God is an abstract ideal, then he is not perfectly real (Platonism is controversial,
not easily fathomable and dispensable from a Christian viewpoint)
- Response: Perhaps God is a (perfectly real) realisation of the telos
- Rebuttal: If God is a realisation in the universe, then God is an item in the universe which
fails Anselm’s formula and God is contingent and dependant on antecedent causes
- Response:
o Divine greatness need not be conceived along the dimension of productive causality
and God is sufficiently great if God explains the universe’s transition from
potentiality to actuality and, in this sense, the universe’s existence depends on God
o Albeit there’s still a problem in how we identify God as being distinct or not distinct
- Potential objections:
o First objection:
 Their divine desiderata are inconsistent: non-itemhood, non-supernaturalness,
transcendence and perfect reality
 If God is real, then God must exist either in the universe or outside of it
 If he exists outside the universe, God is supernatural, according to them
 If he exists inside the universe, God is an item and not transcendent
o Second objection: their divine desiderata are arbitrary
o Third objection:
 Our evidence suggests that every telos has a causal explanation just as every
child has a parent
 Postulating a telos without a causal explanation contradicts the evidence (like
a child without a parent) and so euteleology is implausible unless there is
stronger evidence for such a telos than there is that all tele have causal
explanations
 They have not given us such evidence, so they have not given us reason to
think it is not implausible - so is it even worth considering?
o Fourth objection:
 They have given us no reason to think that productive causality does not
matter; they just controversially assume it does not
o Fifth objection:
 Religious adherents should take scripture at face value and just assume God
is a personal, efficient cause of the universe unless there is evidence to the
contrary
 They have not given us sufficient evidence to the contrary [although, in
fairness, they think the aforementioned argument from evil is that evidence]
- Discussion question:
o Is Bishop and Perszyk’s euteleology more promising than the POG conception?
3
Section IV: Euteleological account of divine action
- Question: Is there (non-metaphorical) divine action or agency on the euteleological account?
o An adequate conception of divine agency must incorporate God’s action in the
universe’s creation, sustenance and fruition via “saving acts”
- Argument:
o There is non-personal action and agency, like the action of acid in eroding a metal
o So euteleology can also involve non-personal agency
- Objection: Non-personal agency is sub-personal and non-divine, like that of wind and acid
- Response:
o Non-personal, divine agency can also be transpersonal, like group agency
o God actualises (in a broad sense) the universe in terms of being a final cause
- Set-up of a problem:
o Perhaps God’s activity is the activity of loving agents
o But if that is the case, then activity/God is finite, but God is not finite
o But if the activity of loving agents must accord with, manifest or participate in the
agency of the divine will, then God is a personal super-agent (page 16)
- Solution to problem:
o Given these problems, God’s activity is that of a relation of love, not that of loving
agents
o This is coherent and analogous to the action of other relations, such as the relation
between parents in acting upon a child [is that intelligible?]
o This possesses the infinity and unlimitedness of divine power since it is the “most
imaginably powerful force for good” which produces “saving effects”7
- Conclusion:
o The euteleological account possibly supplies an adequate account of divine action in
the creation of, and saving activity within, the universe
o It might not be plausible, particularly given the ‘dysteleological problem of evil’
o Nevertheless, Bishop and Perszyk believe they have reduced the confidence that the
POG account is the only adequate account of divine action
- Potential objections:
o First objection
 According to their account, God is not conscious or intelligent (since God is a
relation), but this seems bizarre
o Second objection:
 It is not clear how God performs saving acts on this account
o Third objection:
 It is ad hoc to interpret God’s creation as being creation without production
o Fourth objection:
 Either the truth conditions for the euteleological conception are merely that
there are loving relations or there are more truth conditions
 It seems there can be no further truth conditions which are intelligible
 But if conditions are merely that there are loving relations, then this is trivial
and if they were met, it would not warrant the claim that “God exists”
- Discussion question:
o Does Bishop and Perszyk’s conception provide an adequate account of divine action?
7
Bishop and Perszyk, “Divine Action,” 17.
4