Presented to the Socratic Club at CBU by Jonathan Bryan on January 10, 2008
Many Christian thinkers have argued that creation could have been otherwise, or even not at all. Since God is supremely happy and content in the triune relationship, God does not need to create. Creation is a free outpouring of love and beauty; it does not add anything to God’s own happiness, beauty, and love that he finds in himself. Thus, the creation of God is a free act, he could have decided to create nothing at all and he could have decided to create an entirely different world. According to Stump and Kretzmann (describing Aquinas’ view as well as their own):
…God might have chosen to create a different universe, provided it was good and created because it was good – e.g. a universe with different physical laws, different elements, different forms of life. And there is reason to suppose that a more fundamental sort of alternative is also open to him. Since goodness, the end served by his actions, is present and perfect even if nothing else exists, because he himself is identical with perfect goodness, it seems open to him not to create at all.[1]
If this is true, why does God create at all? We may say that there is some reason for God to create, that there is some good that creation results in, but what good could creation produce that God does not already have? If, on the other hand, we say that creation does not result in some good, then what reason could God have for creating? If God creates, then it seems that it is necessary that he create the world beautifully. Since an ugly world would be against God’s very nature, it seems impossible that God could create an ugly world. As Stump and Kretzmann maintain, God can create an alternate universe only if that world is good and created because it was good. But if we accept this principle, do we also have to say that God must create the most beautiful world possible? Why would a perfect God create anything less? Given these questions, I will here consider some of the arguments which maintain that creation is necessary, try to provide some answers to these arguments, and provide some arguments for the notion that God is free to create a different world or no world at all.
The first argument I will consider uses the definition of God found in the Ontological argument. It seems that we can take the principle that God is “that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought” or that God is a maximally excellent being, and try to show that God is only able to create the most beautiful world possible. If creating the most beautiful world possible is a great-making property (that is, all other things being equal, if a being who creates the most beautiful world possible is better than a being who does not) then it seems that God must create the most beautiful world possible in every possible world, (which means that creation is necessary). In other words:
1. God is a maximally great being.
2. Necessarily, a being is maximally great only if it has maximal excellence in every world.
3. Necessarily, a being has maximal excellence in every world only if it creates the most beautiful world possible in every possible world.
4. Therefore, creation could not have been otherwise.
The problem with this argument is the third premise. Should we really say that the act of creating is a great making property? If we do, we seem to be saying that God needs to create in order to be God, and that the love, beauty, goodness, etc. in the relationship of the Trinity is not sufficient after all. It seems, on the other hand, that we can replace 3 with a claim which seems truer and which reaches the opposite conclusion:
3. Necessarily, a being is maximally great only if it is maximally great regardless of whether it creates any world.
4. Therefore, a maximally great being need not create any world to be maximally great.
A more common argument for the necessity of creation follows along the lines of Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason. Menssen and Sullivan give us a Leibnizian line of argument that God could not do other than create the best possible world:
1. God choose to create this world over all other possible worlds.
2. It is irrational to choose x over y unless one judges x to be better than y.
3. God cannot act irrationally.
4. Therefore, this world is better than all other possible worlds.
5. Therefore, there is a best possible world.
6. If there is a best possible world, then God must actualize or create it.
7. Therefore, God must create the best possible world.[2]
One may question, however, whether the second premise is true. As Messen and Sullivan point out, it may be the case that it is possible to choose between equally attractive alternatives, or it may be the case that there is no “best possible world,” and so any world God chooses would automatically be a lesser world than he could have chosen.[3] Premise 2, in fact, seems to have weight only if we are already assuming that there is never a state of affairs in which two equally attractive alternatives are presented. But why should we suppose that there are no such states of affairs? Without any argument that there are no such states of affairs, we have no reason to accept premise 2 of the argument. But does Leibniz at least show that God must create some world, even if it there is no best world? Messen and Sullivan provide us with this variation:
(Where W includes all possible states of affairs in which God creates no world, and W* includes all possible states of affairs in which God creates some world.)
1. There is at least one world in W*
2. If there is at least one world in the set of possible worlds W*, then God must create a material world (must actualize one of the possible worlds in W*) [because]
a. Some possible worlds in W* are better than all possible worlds in W.
b. Where there are possible worlds of any type x that are better than possible worlds of type y, God’s act of creating a type-x world is better than his act of creating a type-y world.
c. If one action is better than another, then God cannot choose the less perfect action over the more perfect action.
3. Therefore, God must create a world in W*.[4]
The first premise we may wish to challenge in this argument is 2a, “some possible worlds in W* [where God and some world exists] are better than all possible worlds in W [where only God exists]. Messen and Sullivan think this premise may be true, but I would like to put forth the following counter argument:
1. Nothing that God creates has any ontological value which God himself does not also have.
2. Therefore, a state of affairs in which God creates some world (W*) is of equal value to a state of affairs in which God does not create some world (W).
In other words, if God creates some world, everything beautiful, good, valuable etc. about that world is merely a reflection of God’s beauty, goodness, value and so forth. Thus, if God exists, he cannot add any value to that state of affairs by creating something, regardless of whether it happens to be the best possible world. This seems sufficient to defeat premise 2.
The premise that Menssen and Sullivan take issue with, however is 2c. Banking on their earlier insistence that we need not accept Leibniz’ contention that there is a best possible world, they insist that 2c is false because “it seems completely arbitrary to require that God create a material world, to hold that God’s creation is necessary, but to allow that he might create a less than the best possible world, that he might perform some creative act less good than another he was capable of performing.”[5] In other words, if we are arguing not that God must create the best possible world but only that God must create some world, then we have already let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, in allowing God to create a world which is not the best. If God does not choose the best, than he is already, it seems, performing a less perfect action than he could, and so 2c is already assumed to be false.
It seems, therefore, that we have good reasons to reject the Leibnizian argument for a creation that could not be otherwise. As none of this is able to explain, perhaps, the burning question of the Leibnizian minded person: “why then did God create the universe?” I offer (since I do not know the answer to this question) two arguments which I think show that it is better to view the universe as something that could have been otherwise. First, the otherness of creation and the distance it has from God is required for its very beauty in reflecting God, which could not exist if creation existed necessarily. Second, a non-compatibilistic view of free will, which is necessary for a good understanding of the beauty of the relationship between God and creatures created in his image, is impossible if creation is necessarily the way it is. The first of these arguments, which I draw from David Bentley Hart (hopefully without misunderstanding him), I put as follows:
1. In order for creation to reflect the beauty of God, its beauty must in some way be other than (but not more than) the beauty of God which is essential to God.
2. If creation is necessary, then it is not other than the beauty of God which is essential to God.
3. Creation is a reflection of God’s beauty.
4. Therefore, creation is not necessary.
The first two premises may not seem obviously true. In defense of the first premise, I think it would be advantageous to think of what it would mean for the beauty of creation to be identical to the beauty of God. If this were the case, creation would not just reflect but would be or contain the full beauty of God. This seems clearly heretical. Creation must be something not God, it must be somehow distant from God’s own being, so that it can truly be a reflection of God and not some odd fourth person of the Godhead. Given this, it seems that the first premise should be accepted. As for the second premise, it seems to me that any creation which God creates necessarily would be a necessary extension of God’s nature. That is, to argue that creation is necessary we would maintain that creation must be X (and exist) because God must be Y. But any such formula would seem to make a necessary connection between the essence of God and creation. That is, creation itself would be necessary for God to be God. Given this, and given the obviousness of the third premise, I conclude that creation could have been otherwise than it is. According to Hart:
The freedom of God from ontic determination is the ground of creation’s goodness: precisely because creation is uncompelled, unnecessary, and finally other that the dynamic life of coinherent love whereby God is God, it can reveal how God is the God he is; precisely because creation is needless, an object of delight that shares God’s love without contributing anything that God does not already possess in infinite eminence, creation reflects the divine life, which is one of delight and fellowship and love; precisely because it is not “substantially” from God, or metaphysically cognate to God’s essence, or a pathos of God, it is an analogy of the divine perichoresis and that obeys no necessity but divine love itself.[6]
What Hart wants to defend in this paragraph is the utter sufficiency of the Trinity to love and be loved. Creation is unnecessary, and because it is unnecessary it is able to reveal who God is.
The second argument I wish to present is as follows:
1. If creation could not be otherwise, then creatures could not be otherwise.
2. If creatures could not be otherwise, then they cannot have non-compatibilistic free will.
3. If creatures cannot have this sort of free will, they cannot be really involved in a true relationship with God and so reflect God’s glory to an extent further than the rest of creation.
4. Creatures are (or should be) involved in a true relationship with God and reflect God’s glory to an extent further than the rest of creation.
If we accept the earlier point that creation can only reflect God’s beauty because there is some distance between God and creation, we should acknowledge a different sort of distance between God and man. God created man in his image, which means he should reflect God’s beauty in a fuller sense than do the other created things. This further beauty, I argue, is in the real relationship between God and man which does not exist between, for example, God and thistle bushes. Thistle bushes do not will, love, or obey, and so are not able to maintain the level of relationship with God that man was created for. Now, for man to truly will God’s beauty, love God, and obey God, and for this willing, loving, and obeying to be truly his own will, love, and obedience, it seems that he must have free will in some kind of libertarian sense, that is, a will which involves choices which are truly his own and not someone else’s. The point I am making is very similar to the point about creation needing to be other than God. In order for there to exist a relation between God and man, there must be a distance from God in an even more radical way than the general otherness of creation. A man’s will to choose God must in some sense be his own will, but it seems obvious to me that a determined will is not at all his own. This, I think, is what Lewis argues in Mere Christianity:
The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between man and woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that you need free will.[7]
Since a creation that could not be otherwise would not allow for libertarian choices, it seems to me we have good reason to believe that creation does not exist necessarily.
[1] Stump, Elenore and Norman Kretzmann. “Absolute Simplicity” Faith and Philosophy 2, 4. 1985. Pg 353
[2] Menssen, Sandra and Thomas Sullivan. “Must God Create?” Faith and Philosophy 3: 1995. Pg 322
[3] Ibid. Pg 323.
[4] Ibid. Pg 323-324
[5] Ibid. Pg 327-328
[6] Hart, David Bentley. The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003. Pg 158
[7] Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Pg 48
