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God and the Issue of Being

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Ivor Leclerc
Affiliation:
Fuller E. Callaway, Professor of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy, Emory University

Extract

There is a long tradition in Western philosophical theology of conceiving God as ‘a being’. It dates back to the Hellenistic period, more particularly to the conjunction of Greek philosophy and the Hebrew religion in Alexandria with Philo, and it became orthodox in the Christian tradition through Augustine. In our time most aspects of this religious tradition have been subjected to a salutary re-examination, but in this the concept of God as ‘a being’ has been relatively neglected. After such a long acceptance of so fundamental a doctrine, it is liable largely to have sunk to the status of a presupposition, entailing a loss of intellectual awareness of what precisely it implies. Even where the Augustinian philosophical argument upon which this concept is based is recognized, as it has been in the long Neoplatonic tradition, it has come to appear as essentially self-evident and thus has not been subjected to fundamental critical examination. Significant of this is that even where the personalistic conception of God has been abandoned, e.g. by the idealist philosophy of the Absolute, the conception nevertheless persists of God as ‘a being’.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

page 63 note 1 For a notable recent instance of this see the paper by Findlay, John N., ‘The Impersonality of God’, in God: the Contemporary Discussion, ed. by Sontag, Frederick and Bryant, M. Darrol (New York: The Rose Sharon Press, 1982), pp. 181–96.Google Scholar

page 64 note 1 Usually stated as the distinction between the verb as a copula and as meaning ‘exist’.

page 64 note 2 Lewis, and Short, A Latin Dictionary:Google Scholar ‘to stand out or step out, to come forth, emerge, appear’. The new Oxford Latin Dictionary distinguishes three senses:

To come into view or sim., appear. b to rise from the dead; also ab inferis -ere. c (of sounds) to be heard, arise.

To come forward, present oneself (in some capacity). b to show oneself, prove to be (of a given character); (also of things).

3 (of activities, conditions), To come into being, emerge, arise. b (impers.) it follows as a consequence (that). c (leg. of a condicio) to be fulfilled.’

page 64 note 3 Cf. e.g. Aquinas, Thomas, De Ente et Essentia (ed. Baur, Ludovicus, ch. 4):Google Scholar ‘quod est res quaedam existens extra singularis’, where its meaning is clearly the original one of ‘to be present’.

page 65 note 1 I have undertaken this in a book on The Theory of Being: An Inquiry in Ontology (publication forthcoming).

page 65 note 2 Kahn, Charles H., The Verb ‘Be’ in Ancient Greek (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1973), p. 486Google Scholar (part vi of The Verb ‘Be’ and its Synonyms, edited by Verhaar, John W. M., Foundations of Language, Supplementary Series, vol. 16)Google Scholar; hereafter cited as VBAG.

page 65 note 3 VBAG 217.

page 65 note 4 VBAG 219.

page 65 note 5 VBAG 224.

page 65 note 6 VBAG 224.

page 66 note 1 VBAG, ch. VI, pp. 228–330.

page 66 note 2 VBAG 271. All italics in quotations are in the original unless otherwise stated.

page 66 note 3 VBAG 252.

page 66 note 4 Aesch. P.V. 846; VBAG 259.

page 67 note 1 Jaeger, Werner, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 197.Google Scholar

page 67 note 2 Ibid.

page 67 note 3 VBAG 455–6.

page 67 note 4 VBAG 297.

page 67 note 5 For this see my The Theory of Being and Pannendes: The Discovery of Being (also forthcoming).

page 67 note 6 Aristotle, , Metaphysics, 1080 b 16–20.Google Scholar

page 67 note 7 Cf. Aristotle, , Physics, 213 b22–6.Google Scholar

page 68 note 1 This is the argument of Fr. 2: ‘the only ways of inquiry that are to be thought of. The one, that it is and that it is impossible for it not to be, is the path of Persuasion (for she attends on Truth). The other, that it is not, and that it must necessarily not be, that I declare is a wholly indiscernible track; for thou couldst not know what is not – that is impossible – not declare it, (fr. 3) for it is the same thing that can be thought and can be.’ [Tr. by Guthrie, W. C. K., A History of Greek Philosophy, 11 (Cambridge: University Press, 1965), 1314.]Google Scholar

page 68 note 2 Frs. 2 and 3.

page 68 note 3 See my Parmenides: The Discovery of Being for the justification of this interpretation of the identity of Parmenides' τò έóν.

page 68 note 4 This entails that a cosmogeny, as his predecessors had argued for, is without any valid basis; only a cosmology can be valid.

page 68 note 5 Fr. 8, line 43.

page 69 note 1 Plato, , Phaedo, 79A.Google Scholar

page 69 note 2 Cf. Hirzel, R., ‘Ούσία’, in Philologus LXXU (1913), 4252.Google Scholar

page 69 note 3 Plato, , Gorgias, 472B.Google Scholar

page 69 note 4 Cf. Protagoras 349BGoogle Scholar, Euthyphro 11 AGoogle Scholar, Cratylus 423A, 424BGoogle Scholar, Phaedo 65C, 76D77A.Google Scholar

page 70 note 1 Plato, , Republic 478E.Google Scholar

page 70 note 2 Plato, , Republic, 479C. Tr. by Grube, G. M. A..Google Scholar

page 70 note 3 ούσία in this passage is variously rendered: ‘being’ (Grube, Rouse), ‘reality’ (Cornford), ‘existence’ (Shorey).

page 70 note 4 Cf. Sophist 232C, 239B, 245D, 246A, B, C, 248A, C, D, E, 250B, 251 C, D, 260D, 261 E, 262C.Google Scholar

page 70 note 5 Sophist 247E.Google Scholar

page 70 note 6 Sophist 247E.Google Scholar

page 70 note 7 This tends to be obscured by the unfortunate traditional translation of ούσία in Aristotle by ‘substance’.

page 70 note 8 Aristotle, , Metaphysics, 1028b4.Google Scholar

page 70 note 9 In book v, ch. 7.

page 71 note 1 Aristotle, , Metaphysics 1028a 11–15.Google Scholar

page 71 note 2 Ibid. 1028a 18–20.

page 71 note 3 Ibid. 4028a22–7.

page 71 note 4 Plotinus, , Enneads V, 9, 3.Google Scholar

page 71 note 5 Enneads V, 9, 6.Google Scholar

page 71 note 6 Ibid.

page 71 note 7 Enneads V, 9, 8.Google Scholar

page 71 note 8 Enneads v, 4, 1.

page 71 note 9 Augustine, , Confessions, book VII, ch. II.Google Scholar

page 72 note 1 Enneads V, 6, 6.Google Scholar

page 72 note 2 It is to be noted that this contrast between the ‘what is’ of a being and its being ‘present there’ is not exactly that which Aristotle had made between the τί έστι (what is) and the ⊙τι έστι (that it is) of a being, since for Aristotle there could be no question of a ‘what is’ unless in fact a being were there.

page 73 note 1 See Thomas Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia, ch.1.

page 73 note 2 Ibid.

page 73 note 3 Aquinas, Thomas, De Ente et Essentia, ch. VI.Google Scholar

page 73 note 4 Henry of Ghent, Quodl. I, q. 9:Google Scholar ‘Et sic in quacunque creatura esse non est aliquid re aliud ab ipsa essentia, additum ei ut sit.’

page 73 note 5 Scotus, Duns, In Sent. III, d. 6, q. 1, nn. 23.Google Scholar

page 74 note 1 Aquinas, Thomas, De Ventate, q. 27, a. 1 ad 8Google Scholar; De Ente et Essentia, ch. v.

page 74 note 2 Scotus, , Opus Oxon. IV Sent. d. 13, q. 1, n. 38.Google Scholar

page 74 note 3 Henry of Ghent, Quodl. 1, q. 9; III, q. 9.Google Scholar

page 74 note 4 Scotus, , Questions disputatae de rerum principio, Q IV, Art. II. Sect. 6Google Scholar; essentias and actualis existentiae are italicized in original.

page 75 note 1 This extreme is manifested in ‘is’ as the ‘existential quantifier’ in modem logic.

page 76 note 1 This is a latter-day continuation of the controversy between Thomism and Neoplatonism as a contrast between ‘existentialism’ and ‘essentialism’.

page 76 note 2 This has occurred in the last few centuries, and it has resulted in reducing ‘ontology’ to the attenuated state exemplified in the recent usage of the term in which it has been shorn of the ‘logos’ portion of the term, i.e. leaving it no longer an ‘inquiry’ or ‘systematic examination’ of on, ‘being’, but only a ‘doctrine’ or assertion of the applicability of logical propositions to ‘what there is’.

page 77 note 1 Plato, , Timaeus, 52B.Google Scholar

page 77 note 2 Plato, , Timaeus, 28C (Cornford transl.).Google Scholar

page 77 note 3 Plato, , Timaeus, 52A.Google Scholar

page 78 note 1 Aristotle, , Metaphysics, 1029a 19–22 (Ross transl.).Google Scholar

page 78 note 2 Aristotle, , Metaphysics, 1036a5–6.Google Scholar

page 78 note 3 Plato, , Timaeus, 29DGoogle Scholar, Republic, 308–9.Google Scholar

page 78 note 4 Section VI above.