chapter I consider several kinds of difference in the order of their radicality, what can be
said for and against them, and their implications.
The smallest significant step beyond univocity would involve some tinkering with the
human senses so as to meet points of the sort just made. First, think of divine
immateriality. If we subtract bodily movement from human action concepts, is there
anything left? Of course there is. My parting the waters is not just a matter of my moving
my arms and hands in a certain way. There is also my willing to do so for the sake of the
waters being parted, as well as the actual resultant parting. (If you prefer not to speak of
willing, you could substitute an intention or choice.) In the human case, the bodily
movement functions as a bridge or conduit between the willing and the external result,
enabling the willing to issue in that result. But God's lack of a body does not prevent his
willing a certain external result to bring about that result and thereby doing so, just by
willing it. Quite the contrary. After all, God is omnipotent. He doesn't need any
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bodily operation to bring about the willed result. Thus, by starting with the human action
concept and weeding out the bodily intermediary, we wind up with a concept that, while
retaining the most crucial part of the human concept, could be true of an immaterial deity.
We may take this example as a model for transforming predicates applied to us into
predicates suitable for divine application. What this gives us is partial univocity, an
alternative pervasively ignored in the millennia-old discussion of this problem. Most
thinkers concerned with the issue, seeing that complete univocity will not work, have
tended to jump immediately to some of the more radical solutions discussed below. But
partial univocity is a serious option, one that deserves much more exploration. For
another example, consider what is necessary to modify concepts of human temporal
operations to make them applicable to an atemporal deity. The trick here is to replace
temporal relations with relations of priority-posteriority, and of dependence of one aspect
on another, that do not require temporality for their realization. Consider carrying out an
intention, something that involves temporal sequence in the human case. How could it be
construed for an atemporal deity? Let's say that one of God's purposes is to bring
Robinson to realize that he can be what God intended him to be only if he renounces
sacrificing everything else to making as much money as possible. For this illustration it
doesn't matter just what means God uses to bring this about; they would all involve some
influences on Robinson's thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and feelings. Let's say God's
purpose is not to bring this about in a flash, but to cause a continual process in Robinson's
mind that will eventually lead to the intended result. This intended effect is a temporal
process. But must God be involved in a temporal process in order to bring this about? Not
necessarily. There could be relations of dependence of one aspect of God's willing on
another in God's single eternal now that are, so to say, functionally equivalent to temporal
relations of cause and effect. God wills that certain temporal psychological processes take
place in Robinson by virtue of his willing that these processes eventuate in a certain
result, and as a result of all this divine willing that result does eventuate. All this without
God himself having to live through successive divine stages. We have partial univocity of
human and divine carrying out of purposes, a univocity with respect to the dependence of
certain aspects on others, along with a difference between temporality and atemporality.