state, in no way changing; nor is it fitting for him to go now here now there”; that
“without effort, by the will of his mind he shakes everything”; that “he sees as a whole,
he thinks as a whole, and he hears as a whole” (Barnes 1979, 1: 85, 93). Xenophanes'
pronouncements are the first recorded sallies into philosophical theology. Although he
may have had the first word, he did not have the last: his descendants include Plato,
Philo, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Spinoza, and a host of others.
Xenophanes emphasizes the differences between God and creatures. For many religious
believers, however, it is the similarities that are most important. The God of Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam is supposed to care for his creatures, know their innermost hopes
and fears, respond to their prayers, strengthen them against adversity, share in their joy,
console them in their sorrow and grief, judge their deficiencies, and forgive them their
sins. These divine activities are personal; they could issue only from a being with beliefs
and desires similar, in some respects at least, to ours. Any characterization of God that
denied him these personal activities or negotiated them away in favor of some advantage
to philosophical theology would be rightly regarded by believers as akin to replacing
your loved ones with their cardboard cutouts. Thus, it happens that many theists become
wary of theories in philosophical theology that emphasize the differences between God
and creatures. Perhaps no one really believes that God is Just Plain Folks. Even so, if the
ascription of a particular attribute to God were to entail that God does not or cannot
engage in the kinds of personal interactions mentioned above, then so much the worse for
that ascription. To the extent to which philosophical theologians wish to emphasize that
God is not an ordinary being, they are liable to bear the accusation that in making God
Wholly Other, they have made God wholly disconnected.
Still, many of these same theists think they have excellent warrant for believing the
following propositions about God, propositions that surely mark significant differences
between God and creatures:
(A) Everything that exists depends on God for its existence.
(B) Every situation that is the case depends on God for its being the case.
(C) God depends on nothing for his existence.
(D) God depends on nothing for his being what he is.
(E) God is perfectly free.
(A) and (B) are important components of a doctrine about God's metaphysical
sovereignty. (C), (D), and (E) are central elements of a doctrine about God's metaphysical
independence or aseity (from the Latin a se, from or by itself).
Widespread surface allegiance to (A)–(E) can mask deeper disagreements about how to
interpret the theses and what they entail. Thus, consider the pair of theses (A)–(B). We
can ask of (A) how we are to understand the scope of “everything.” Are there features of
reality that are not literally things, and that thus might be independent of God's
sovereignty even while (A) is true? Does God himself fall within the scope of
“everything,” and if so, what sense can we make of the notion that God depends on
himself for his existence? In similar fashion, we can ask how widely to interpret the
phrase “every situation” (alternatively, “every state of affairs”) in (B). Do such
propositions as 2 + 2 = 4, If Jefferson is president, then Jefferson is president, and God is
essentially omniscient pick out situations that fall within the scope of (B)? If so, how
should we understand (B)'s claim that even these situations depend on God for their being
as they are? Or consider the proposition Smith freely chooses to sin: if true, it certainly
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