God cannot explain the origin of life

[rossum]

You misunderstand what “immutable” means.

Immutable means unchanging. Unchanging means that there is no change over time. The God of Genesis does different things, so that God is changing over time. Alternatively the things described in Genesis were not done by immutable-God, but by some other non-immutable entity.

Being immutable means that God’s nature does not change

God’s nature does not change. God’s actions do change. Hence we have a compound God; part is unchanging and part is changing. Like a chessboard, we can only have opposed properties (black and white/changing and immutable) in a compound entity. One single entity cannot be both changing and unchanging. God’s nature is unchanging while God’s actions change. Hence we have a compound entity with at least two components.

Precisely. And the way God creates is distinct from the way that watchmakers, builders, and artists create. I’m glad you see that this is the case – and that this doesn’t do damage to either language or logic.

So, we can still use the word “create” since that single word covers a wide variety of different methods.

rossum

 

[rossum]

God is uncreated. By that standard, you could make the claim that “life is eternal.” No problems there.

I am glad we can agree. That is the point of this thread.

On the other hand, the universe is created; so, you can make the claim “there is an origin to created life,” and that’s OK, too.

In a philosophical discussion I use the definition, “The universe is All That Exists (ATE)”. If God exists and in uncreated then the ATE universe is also uncreated.

My thread title and my OP deliberately do not limit themselves to “created life”. I am discussing life, and a living God has life.

However, attempting to play both ends against the middle, by picking out the createdness of creation, and attempting to apply it to the uncreatedness of God, is simply absurd.

It would be if that was what I were attempting to do. From the start of this thread I have included both created and uncreated life in the discussion. God is described as a living God. Hence “life” must include God as one of the various forms of life. It is you who is trying to make a separation between different forms of life. I do not make that separation, hence my thread title. God is alive and God cannot explain His own existence because He is not created. Hence life (as in the living God) is also uncreated and its origin cannot be explained by divine creation.

rossum

 

[Gorgias]

God is alive and God cannot explain His own existence because He is not created.

The explanation is “God is eternal.” Your statement is correct only if you flesh it out: “God cannot explain His own existence in the same context as created life because He is not created.” It’s not that there is no explanation for God; it’s just that God is not a creation, and therefore, you cannot reasonably expect an explanation of the same type that you can expect from a created being.

Hence life (as in the living God) is also uncreated and its origin cannot be explained by divine creation.

Correct, but only inasmuch as you’re expressing a simple tautology: “Uncreated divine life cannot be explained [in the context of a] divine creation.”

Yes – God is uncreated, which implies that… He’s not created. Glad we could clear that up for you.

 

[Anthony_V]

When we predicate “life” of God, we do it analogically. That doesn’t just mean “metaphor.” It has a more precise philosophical function here.

We might say that “life” is a perfection in certain creatures – plants, animals, humans, angels, and whatever else I don’t know about. The perfections found in certain creatures – that they are good, or beautiful, or living – do in fact exist in God. However, they exist in God in a radically different way, that places God in none of those categories. God is not any kind of thing. He is not “a living thing.” He not even “a being.” Rather, living things and beings find their origin in him.

But how is this possible? How is it that we can say “God is good” without God being in the category of good things? When we say “God is good,” we mean it in a very qualified sense: analogically. In short, it runs like this: God is uncomposed of parts. The perfections we find in creatures exist in God. The perfections we find creatures are parts. Therefore, the perfections we find in creatures exist in God in an uncomposed manner (not as parts). That is, a perfection such as “life” exists in God while existing in a manner only infinitesimally like the way it does in creatures (which is as a part of it). It was famously concluded in Lateran Council IV:

“…between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude”

DS 806 and CCC

Obviously, there’s some skips in my own presentation, but that’s the answer minus the scratch work. It essentially means we can’t predicate “life” univocally of God and creatures. We have to predicate it of God as of something uncomposed, and it’s not possible to see that kind of phenomenon in creatures. We find the same answer in St. Thomas: S.T. Ia Q.13 A.2.

How do we get to that?

All creatures are composed of parts. Even a theoretically un-splittable fundamental particle(s), if there is such a thing(s), is composed of parts. The parts of a creature which are always there, then, are obviously not necessarily physical parts. They are metaphysical: essence and existence. For any necessary clarification, an essence of something is roughly the “whatness” or “quiddity” of something, while the existence of something is the “that it exists” part. Any creature that does not have its existence as its essence would be identical with God, and therefore actually would be God, and therefore would not be a creature. So, in creatures, their (our) “whatness” is distinct from their actually existing. “What they are” does not mandate “that they exist.” At the risk of being side-tracked here, I would additionally mention that all this holds even if there were, say, an infinitely long sequence of causes in the past. I do not find that contradictory, nor did St. Thomas. I just want to allay any potential objections here.

Creatures other than fundamental particles have additional complexity in their essence (although one could, I suppose, try and make fundamental particles subject to some of Aristotle’s nine categories other than substance; I’m no scientist, so don’t look at me for that). Some of these creatures that are not fundamental particles have the additional complexity of “life.” No, this has nothing to do with Paley-style ID arguments of which I and most Thomists are not a fan. All it means is that “life” is an additional part of what it means for something to be what it is. If I were able to somehow enumerate all the essential qualities of that thing, I would have to, in addition to everything else, draw another breath and say “oh yeah, and also it’s alive.” Life is part of the essence of living things. (We’ll not here go into things like dead bodies of animals, which would be its own discussion.)

Unless we would absolutely like to go into the definition of a “perfection,” it suffices here to simply say that “life” would be a perfection of living things.

So, when Catholics say that “God is a living God,” what are we referring to? The fact that He has the perfection of life (or any perfection), found in creatures, but in an uncomposed manner, which is radically different from the composed manner in which it is found in creatures.

So we can certainly say that God is the origin of life, because when we say “life” we refer to a perfection in created things that necessarily have metaphysical composition, and therefore that have that perfection of life in a composed manner. God is not “alive” in the univocal sense of the term by which we refer to living creatures. But that does not make him “dead” or non-living absolutely, because He has life in an uncomposed way.

Now, we might ask the question: Why does it matter that we’re dealing with life as predicated of God versus as part of a creature? Because when we refer to the life that is found uncomposedly in God, we do not refer just to “life,” but to every perfection that is found in him. In fact, there really isn’t in Him any distinction between them. That’s precisely the point of divine simplicity. Goodness, truth, beauty, existence – the are all the same in God, because He is uncomposed of parts. This simple, uncomposed, divine essence is not what I mean to point out when I say “Hey, that dog is alive!” But, on the other hand, we can predicate “life” of God in a qualified sense. So, we can predicate these names of God, but only analogically; we cannot predicate them of Him in the same way we predicate them of creatures.

I hope that helps.

 

[Tomdstone]

God is not any kind of thing. … He not even “a being.” .

A being is something that exists. I don’t see how you can say that God exists and He is not a Being.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that God is the Supreme Being.

 

[Anthony_V]

A being is something that exists. I don’t see how you can say that God exists and He is not a Being.
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that God is the Supreme Being.

There are some who have taught this, such as Bl. Duns Scotus, but he does not speak for the whole tradition of the Church. Moreover, some theologians don’t find him successful. And, we would have to make an entire load of qualifications, as he does, anyway; and, finally, he doesn’t reject entirely St. Thomas’ notion of analogy, even if he tweaks it a bit. Moreover, we might add that the Church has not upheld Bl. Duns Scotus in the same way she has upheld St. Thomas in, say Aeterni Patris. With respect to God not being any kind of thing, we see, for example, through St. Thomas, that He is not in any genera, not even “being” (although the genus of “being” doesn’t exist, as St. Thomas points out that Aristotle points out, in that same link to the Summa). I might also link you here to a video by (now Bishop, but then Father) Robert Barron, who constantly repeats that in his videos (many of which are good).

God cannot be a being (unless we make a lot of Scotist qualifications that tinker with our starting definitions), even a supreme one, because His existence would differ from His essence. He would be another being like you, me, worms, and angels, but just with a bunch of “divine attributes” tagged onto Him. Beings can be more or less supreme, according to their essence. An angel, given that it exists, might be said to be more supreme than, say, a worm. This is because their essence, their “quiddity,” determines them to be more or less supreme. The kind of thing an angel is makes it more supreme than the kind of thing a worm is. If God were a supreme being – even an infinitely supreme being – the kind of thing He is would determine His supremacy, just like the angel and the worm. But, this would mean that God would have parts: He would have an essence distinct from His existence. And this would mean, in turn, that He is not simple. In fact, He would not even be a necessary being, because His essence would not be existence; His quiddity would not mandate that He actually exist. (I am not, by the way, trying to show some sort of Ontological argument right now if it seems to be the case. I’m just showing that there is more than one faulty corollary to supposing that God is a supreme being.) If these things were the case, we would not even be talking about God, but just a very supreme creature – the most supreme. And we would just be backing up the pipes, effectively, since this “God” would begging the question by pointing to the God who actually is uncomposed of essence and existence distinctly, and Who possesses all those divine attributes in a simple manner. We would be in error.

How can God exist, then? He does so in the same way He has life: uncomposedly. In Him, existence and essence are the same. So, when we predicate “existing” of Him, we do so only analogically. All these things which we predicate of creatures exist in Him in a way anterior to any complexity whatsoever. Even anterior to the complexity of the distinction between essence and existence. Even anterior to supremacy or existing, and anything we can predicate of creatures.

(Yes, the Trinitarian issue is a different one, because we start dealing with scripture and councils and Cappadocian fathers, so I won’t go into that [moreover I’m not well versed]. If you want another resource, I refer you to St. Thomas. I would have to dig out some books and do some research to formulate a satisfactory answer.)

 

[rossum]

The explanation is “God is eternal.”

God is eternal and God is a living God. Hence both God and life are eternal. Hence neither God not life have an origin, being eternal.

Since life is eternal and so has no origin, God cannot be an explanation for the origin of life.

QED.

rossum

 

[rossum]

When we predicate “life” of God, we do it analogically.

OK. So as to avoid confusion, we shall restrict the word “life” to mean non-divine life only. We shall use a new word, “ilamem” to designate the analogue of life that God possesses. Thus the title of my thread becomes: “God cannot explain the origin of ilamem”.

My philosophical point still remains. Both God and ilamem are eternal, so God cannot explain the origin of ilamem.

You have not really gained much by splitting the definition of “life”.

He not even “a being.”

A being is something that exists. Are you saying that God does not exist? This is not a good argument from your point of view. As Tomdstone pointed out, if God is not a being then He cannot be the Supreme Being.

But how is this possible? How is it that we can say “God is good” without God being in the category of good things? When we say “God is good,” we mean it in a very qualified sense: analogically.

So, again we need a different word. “Good” does not apply to God, so to avoid confusion we shall use “horami” instead to apply to God. Thus there is a category of “things which are horami”, and that category only has one member: God.

What have you gained here, philosophically? Whenever you claim that a particular word does not apply to God, or only applies analogically, then it is easy enough to generate a new word, specific to God, and use that word instead.

In short, it runs like this: God is uncomposed of parts.

That is a different argument, and one which I disagree with. However, it would take this thread too far off topic. You can refer to my discussion about chessboards upthread to get some idea of my approach. Alternatively have a look at Nagarjuna’s analysis of the question.

So, when Catholics say that “God is a living God,” what are we referring to? The fact that He has the perfection of life (or any perfection), found in creatures, but in an uncomposed manner, which is radically different from the composed manner in which it is found in creatures.

I have avoided that issue above, by changing to “God is an ilameming God.”

So we can certainly say that God is the origin of life, because when we say “life” we refer to a perfection in created things that necessarily have metaphysical composition, and therefore that have that perfection of life in a composed manner. God is not “alive” in the univocal sense of the term by which we refer to living creatures. But that does not make him “dead” or non-living absolutely, because He has life in an uncomposed way.

In my OP I did not restrict the definition of life. Since you wish to restrict it, I have introduced “ilamem” to make things clearer. God cannot explain the origin of ilamem.

You might wish to inform Bible translators that they need to rework their translations to incorporate the more specific words like ilamem and horami that apply to God. I suppose it is too late to make the equivalent amendments to the Hebrew and Greek originals.

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

When we predicate “life” of God, we do it analogically. That doesn’t just mean “metaphor.” It has a more precise philosophical function here. . . beings find their origin in him . . . (lots of good stuff, clearly and coherently presented, making understandable stuff that is usually anything but) . . . I hope that helps.

. . . God cannot be a being (unless we make a lot of Scotist qualifications that tinker with our starting definitions), even a supreme one, because His existence would differ from His essence. . . (More great stuff) . . . How can God exist, then? He does so in the same way He has life: uncomposedly. In Him, existence and essence are the same. So, when we predicate “existing” of Him, we do so only analogically. All these things which we predicate of creatures exist in Him in a way anterior to any complexity whatsoever. Even anterior to the complexity of the distinction between essence and existence. . . .

Thanks!

 

[Gorgias]

Let me fix that for you:

God is eternal and God is a living God. Hence both God and divine life are eternal. Hence neither God nor divine life have an origin, being eternal.

In a sense, this would be correct – except that God is life itself. Therefore, He himself is the source of life.

 

[Anthony_V]

You have not really gained much by splitting the definition of “life”.

I think you’re missing my point, but perhaps I’m not doing a great job of explaining. I’m not trying to split the definition of “life.” I’m not changing it at all. I’m just not referring to it univocally – the same way I predicate “life” of you, me, and a cat. Yes, when we talk about “life” existing in God, we are talking about an analogue. But that “analogue” is not just some quality in God that allows us to predicate “life” of Him. If God were composed of qualities, He would not be simple. God is all the same. When we say God is “life,” we are referring to exactly the same thing about Him when we say God is “good,” and even precisely the same thing that we predicate of Him when we say that He “exists.” Existing, when it comes to creatures, does not logically entail “life,” and “goodness”; however it is the case for God, because He is not composed of parts. Every perfection we enumerate of Him exists in Him in a manner prior to any distinction between those perfections. The analogue of “life” is God; if we refer to Him, we refer in reality to all of Him, because He is One. An imperfect analogy would be the colors of visible light existing in white light in a manner prior to their distinction.

A being is something that exists. Are you saying that God does not exist? This is not a good argument from your point of view. As Tomdstone pointed out, if God is not a being then He cannot be the Supreme Being.

I am quite adamant in saying that God does not exist, if by existing you mean the manner in which creatures exist – which is such that their essence is distinct from their existence. He is not a particular kind of thing which exists. Kinds of things are distinguished by their essence, or “whatness.” God is simply Himself, anterior to any kinds of things that are possible (and kinds of things are possible because there are different kinds of essences; if dog and cat were not different essences, we would not have two kinds of things but only one). Like I said above, when we say that a creature “exists,” we mean that in a way which is without respect to the kind of thing it is. It maybe a dog, or a rock, or a person. It doesn’t matter. They all exist, and the fact that they exist says nothing about the kind of thing they are, except perhaps circumstantially. But when we say that God “exists,” we mean so in a way that logically entails his essence – his essence being whatever we are referring to when we predicate “life,” and “goodness,” and so forth of Him. The reason that we logically entail his essence when we refer to his existence, and vice versa, is that they are the same thing: God is uncomposed of parts, and so there is no distinction in Him. He is simply Himself. The analogue of “life” in God is God. No need for another word. We articulate them differently for our benefit. He really has them, but in a way ontologically prior to their differentiation in creatures – which, by definition, prevents us from seeing this kind of absolute simplicity in creatures. The point is that because the “kind of existing” that God does actually entails his essence, it is not at all the kind of existing which creatures do, since their existing does not entail what they are except perhaps circumstantially. The reason, again, is that God’s existence does not differ from His essence. They are the same thing; and so really they are ontologically prior to any distinction between existing and being a kind of thing. For that reason, He neither “exists,” in the normal sense of the word, nor is a “kind of thing,” since normal kinds of things does not logically entail that they exist.

I am also quite adamant in saying that God is not the Supreme Being, because that would make Him a creature, for the same reasons I just listed. I dealt with that in my above post.

So, again we need a different word. “Good” does not apply to God, so to avoid confusion we shall use “horami” instead to apply to God. Thus there is a category of “things which are horami”, and that category only has one member: God.

We don’t need another word. “Good” and “life” exist uncomposedly in God. They are not distinct. Neither are they “parts” of God that we pick out and identify.
This means that God is not in any category, as I stated. He is not any kind of thing. He is anterior to kind and category. It is kind and category that are grounded in Him, not the other way around.

It might seem like I’m just being a pain in insisting that God is uncomposed, but that is precisely the qualification we have to keep in mind when we predicate anything of God. Predication, in the manner we use it every day (univocally), entails complexity. But God is not complex. So, we have to qualify our use of predication such that we can use it to talk about God. This extends to our use of “life.” Hopefully I’m not muddying things up.

You might wish to inform Bible translators that they need to rework their translations to incorporate the more specific words like ilamem and horami that apply to God. I suppose it is too late to make the equivalent amendments to the Hebrew and Greek originals.

No, scripture is quite fine the way it is. It is perfectly within the Catholic tradition to interpret scripture in a variety of senses, which, in terms of historical scholarship, was made explicit at least back to Origen in the 3rd century. We can predicate “life” of God without necessarily predicating it univocally. See the quote in one of my above posts which I drew from Lateran Council IV, which was also Ecumenical.

 

[Anthony_V]

And my more proximate point, again, is that we have no difficulty in saying that God is the origin of life. God’s “life” is not another kind of life we must account for. God’s “life” is God Himself. And it is obvious to say that God is not life as we univocally predicate it of creatures; otherwise we would be saying that He’s literally my life, your life, the dog’s life, the plant’s life, etc. such that when the plant dies, God dies. The plant has a vital force distinct from God. Every creature has a vital force distinct from God. Hence, when we say that He is the origin of those things, we do not mean that there is some origin at which God a given vital force are literally the same thing. We would be trapped into pantheism. What we mean is that there is a causal origin of life, and that causal origin is God. God is the efficient cause, not the formal cause, of creatures. As an efficient cause, He creates forms from nothing (that would be the “origin” of the “whatness” of things, if someone pressed to ask). It’s not that there is an origin at which He and creatures are formally the same.

 

[Tomdstone]

I am also quite adamant in saying that God is not the Supreme Being, because that would make Him a creature, for the same reasons I just listed.

What you are saying here appears to be seriously in error and contrary to Roman Catholic teaching:
Who is God?
God is the Supreme Being, infinitely perfect, who made all things and keeps them in existence.
ewtn.com/faith/teachings/GODA21a.htm

 

[rossum]

In a sense, this would be correct – except that God is life itself. Therefore, He himself is the source of life.

So, God caused God. Does that make God an effect rather than a cause? Is God allowed to be an effect, or is He only ever a cause?

You need to be very careful with the logic here.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Yes, when we talk about “life” existing in God, we are talking about an analogue.

And I made the analogy clearer by proposing a different word for ‘analogue-life’. It seems to me that you want to have two types of life in one part of the argument and only one type of life in the other part. Using two different words makes any such equivocation clearer.

If remains true that God cannot explain the origin of analogue-life because analogue-life is eternal, and anything that is eternal has no origin or cause, by definition.

I am quite adamant in saying that God does not exist, if by existing you mean the manner in which creatures exist – which is such that their essence is distinct from their existence.

So, God does not exist, He analogue-exists. Again, we can avoid the problem by using words with a more constrained definition. You are not really saying much here, just defining a new word.

He is not a particular kind of thing which exists. Kinds of things are distinguished by their essence, or “whatness.”

Can we distinguish God from a cat or from a statue of George Washington? Of course we can. God is not a a statue. If God is not distinguishable then we could worship the statue of George Washington as an idol, and that would be indistinguishable from worshipping God. By making God indistinguishable from anything that is not-God, you have made a major error.

This means that God is not in any category, as I stated.

Of course He is in a category. He is in the category, “Things that are not in any category”. He is in the category, “God”. He is in the category, “Things that some people worship”. He is in the category, “Things that some people do not believe in”.

You do not appear to be thinking things through fully here. The Bible itself places God in many categories. “Creator” for one. Do you deny that God is in the category, “Creators”?

rossum

 

[magnet]

Did eternity exist before the “Big Bang”? If God is eternal, that means He/She was here before the universe.

 

[Gorgias]

So, God caused God. Does that make God an effect rather than a cause?

No – God did not ‘cause God’. That’s an error in logic, the result of which is the erroneous statement you make: God is not an ‘effect’.

God is uncaused – and therefore, He is never an ‘effect’, but is always only a ‘cause.’

The logical errors you’re making here are rather elementary…

You need to be very careful with the logic here.

Quite. Or, more to the point, you need to be somewhat more careful with your use of logic here…

 

[rossum]

God is uncaused – and therefore, He is never an ‘effect’, but is always only a ‘cause.’

Above you said:

God is life itself.

Putting your two statements together we have:

• God is life.
• God is uncaused.

Given these two statements, then we can say that life is uncaused. Hence, my contention in this thread is confirmed. Life is uncaused, so it cannot have a cause. Specifically God cannot be the cause of life.

I am glad that we can agree on this.

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

. . . Hence, my contention in this thread is confirmed. Life is uncaused, so it cannot have a cause. Specifically God cannot be the cause of life.
. . .

The issue, as has been previously addressed, boils down to how the terms are being used, In this quote, they are being mashed into your belief system. It will not work. You will have to move beyond it. Recent posters, it seems to me, could not have been clearer. Try to enter into the vision that is being presented. To understand these matters one has either to accept what has been revealed or to become enlightened. Both are difficult to do, one is completely possible in this life. If you pray, pray for the enlightenment of all creation.

By the way, what’s with the “I’m glad we agree”? You clearly do not agree with the Catholic faith, nor that poster. You are agreeing with yourself, your own understanding of what was said.

 

[Gorgias]

we can say that life is uncaused. Hence, my contention in this thread is confirmed. Life is uncaused, so it cannot have a cause. Specifically God cannot be the cause of life.

Close. I’m repeating myself, but I’ll try again anyway:

Correct, but only inasmuch as you’re expressing a simple tautology: “Uncreated divine life cannot be explained in the context of a divine creation.”

Your attempt to describe divine life (which is uncaused) in terms of created life (which does have a cause and a temporal beginning) fails because you’re “crossing the streams” (to put it in 80’s Ghostbusters-speak): you’re attempting to use a category which applies to the latter in the context of the former. And, as such, you come up with a simple, trivial fact: uncreated divine life cannot be explained in the ways that created life can. And yes, we can agree on that: divine life is uncaused.

Yet, we cannot say “God cannot explain the origin of life”, because He is life itself. He explains it in His very existence. He cannot explain it by recourse to a thing that created Him, of course, since that’s absurd – but that’s the game you’re playing here: attempting to use a type of statement that’s perfectly reasonable in our context (as created beings), but is unreasonable (and absurd) in a context that asserts that God is divine and uncreated. It’s kind of like saying “God cannot explain why He does not have ten fingers”. Just. Absurd.