The Paradox of Charity

We might call the following three statements "the Paradox of Charity":

1. In charity, we love our neighbor primarily because of our neighbor’s relation to God.

2. In the best kind of love, we love our neighbor primarily because of our neighbor’s intrinsic properties.

3. Charity is the best kind of love.

I think this paradox discloses something very deep.

Note that the above three statements do not by themselves constitute a strictly logical contradiction. To get a strictly logical contradiction we need a premise like:

4. No intrinsic property of our neighbor is a relation to God.

Now, let’s think (2) through. I think our best reason for accepting (2) is not abstract considerations of intrinsicness, but particular cases of properties. In the best kind of love, perhaps, we love our neighbor because our neighbor is a human being, is a finite person, has a potential for human flourishing, etc. We may think that these features are intrinsic to our neighbor, but we directly see them as apt reasons for the best kind of love, without depending on their intrinsicness.

But suppose ontological investigation of such paradigm properties for which one loves one’s neighbor with the best kind of love showed that these properties are actually relational rather than intrinsic. Would that make us doubt that these properties are a fit reason for the best kind of love? Not at all! Rather, if we were to learn that, we would simply deny (2). (And notice that plenty of continentally-inclined philosophers do think that personhood is relational.)

And that is my solution. I think (1), (3) and (4) are true. I also think that the best kind of neighbor love is motivated by reasons such as that our neighbor is a human being, or a person, or has a potential for human flourishing. I conclude from (1), (3) and (4) that these properties are relations to God.

But how could these be relations to God? Well, all the reality in a finite being is a participation in God. Thus, being human, being a finite person and having a potential for human flourishing are all ways of participating in God, and hence are relations to God. Indeed, I think:

5. Every property of every creature is a relation to God.

It follows that no creature has any intrinsic property. The closest we come to having intrinsic properties are what one might call “almost intrinsic properties”—properties that are relational to God alone.

We can now come back to the original argument. Once we have seen that all creaturely properties are participations in God, we have no reason to affirm (2). But we can still affirm, if we like:

6. In the best kind of love, we love our neighbor primarily because of our neighbor’s almost intrinsic properties, i.e., our neighbor’s relations only to God.

And there is no tension with (1) any more.

Forgiveness of sins

It is very plausible that God can forgive wrongs we do to him. But a very difficult question which is rarely discussed by philosophers of religion is how God can forgive wrongs done to beings other than God.

This puzle seems to me to be related to the mystery of the line: “Against you [God], you alone, have I sinned” in Psalm 51:4, a line that seems on its face to contradict the obvious fact that the sins in question (David’s adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah) seem to be primarily against human beings. Perhaps also related is Jesus’s puzzling statement: “No one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18).

I think the answer to all of these questions may lie in a metaphysics and axiology of participation on which all the value of creatures is value had by participation in God, so that only God is good in the primary sense and only God is sinned against in the primary sense, which in turn gives God the normative power to forgive all wrongs, including wrongs directly against God as such as well as wrongs against God’s goodness as participated in by creatures.

Natural law and participation in God

According to Natural Law, the right thing to do is that which accords with one's nature. But what if something really nasty accorded with one's nature? This is, of course, akin to the objection to divine command theory from the question "What if God commanded something really nasty?" Both theories can give the same answer: "That's just impossible." God couldn't command something really nasty and there just are no possible natures of rational beings that require such nastiness. As far as that goes, this is fine, though at this point in the literature there are two more steps in the dialectic to think about.

I want to, however, consider a side-step. Why is it impossible? One could think this is just a brute and unexplained impossibility, but that is unsatisfactory intellectually. Even apart from the Principle of Sufficient Reason, we don't like brute facts that look like too much of a coincidence. And it looks like too much of a coincidence that all of the nasty cases are impossible. We want an explanation.

The divine command theorist has a pretty immediate explanation. We're talking about God's commands, and necessarily God is perfectly good or, if one prefers, perfectly loving. (Of course, those divine commands who want to define the good, and not just the obligatory, in terms that involve divine choices cannot give this answer. But so much the worse for that version of divine command theory.)

I think the Natural Law answer can be similar. A nature is an essential (in the medieval sense, maybe not the modal sense) mode of participation in God. It's impossible for a rational being's essential mode of participation in God to require nastiness, because of the nature of God. (Why is God's nature that way? Maybe here we have a brute necessity. A single brute necessity is much less problematic than a whole slew of them. Or maybe we can talk of God's perfection here.)

So there is an explanatory gap that Natural Law points to, and bringing in God closes that explanatory gap. Are there other ways of closing that gap? Maybe. One would be a heavily Platonic theory on which natures are modes of essential participation in the Form of the Good. The Platonism here would be more like Plato's own Platonism than our more anemic contemporary Platonism. The participation relation would not be exemplification as in contemporary Platonism, but something ontologically meatier, more like the participation in the theistic version of Natural Law.

In any case, the question of why something nasty couldn't be required by one's nature points towards serious metaphysics.

A Platonic theory of determinables

In an earlier post, I explored, without endorsing, a Platonic theory of spacetime, on which spacetime is an abstract Platonic entity, and objects are located by virtue of standing in a relation to abstract points of that entity.

This could extend to other determinables.  Consider, for instance, mass, and simplify by supposing presentism or lack of time variation.  An object o could have mass x, where x is some real number (we need a natural unit system for that), precisely in virtue of o's being M-related to the real number x, a Platonic entity, where M is a natural "mass relation".  This works even for much more complex determinables like wavefunctions.  Thus, an object o could have a wavefunction in virtue of being W-related to some abstract function from R³ to C, again assuming presentism or lack of time variation.  To get time variation into the picture, we could suppose that the mass relation relates objects to functions from a time sequence (an internal time sequence?) to reals.
This would help with regard to the epistemology of abstracta even if (contrary to fact, I am inclined to say) abstracta are causally inert.  For even if the number x is causally inert, the event of o being M-related to x is not causally inert (it causes gravitational influences, for instance).

One intuitive difficulty for this theory is that it is now looking logically possible for an object to have two masses or two wavefunctions at any given time.  I do not think this consequence absurd myself.  If the second person of the Trinity became incarnate as two different humans at the same time, which Aquinas thinks is possible (a possibility that we may care about if it turns out that there are fallen non-human rational beings), he might have two different masses at a given time.  Alternately, one can just say that there are brutely necessary restrictions here.

Notice an interesting consequence of this theory.  If a naturalist were to adopt this theory, it might make it easier to get her to accept a non-reductionist theory of mind on which for us to believe a proposition just is to stand in an irreducible belief relation to a proposition.  After all, it is no more philosophically puzzling how one can stand in an irreducible mass relation to a number or function than it is how one can stand in an irreducible belief relation to a proposition.  And it is no more philosophically puzzling how one's standing in a belief relation to a proposition could causally affect one's behavior than how one's standing in a mass relation could.

What bothers me about this theory, as well as the earlier theory of spacetime, is that abstracta are divine ideas.  But it seems wrong to say that mass and location facts are constituted by a relation to God.  That sounds too panentheistic.  But here's one interesting philosophical/theological question.  Aquinas insists that things are the way they are by participation in God.  Thus, Socrates is wise by (natural) participation in God (and Paul is wise by supernatural participation in God).  Does this mean that (a) Socrates' accidental form of wisdom is identical with a participating in God or does it mean that (b) Socrates' accidental form of wisdom is something distinct from but dependent on Socrates' participating in God?  If the former, then the Platonic theory I offered will be no more problematic than Aquinas' view (but of course I'll want to say something like what Aquinas says about one-sided relations, so that the mass relation is a relation to God but there is no corresponding relation of God to the object--maybe the suggestion in this post helps), and in fact Aquinas' view might just be a variant of the Platonic theory.  If the latter, then the Platonic theory is more panentheistic than Aquinas', and insofar as Aquinas seems to me to be as close as one can orthodoxly come to panentheism, I would then reject the Platonic theory.

There is also going to be some trickiness coordinating the location determinable with the other determinables.  We want to be able to say things like "x is beige on its left side".  Working this out may require me to abandon the heuristic that there is nothing special about location--that it's just another relation.

Participation in divine goodness

According to St. Thomas, we only have properties like goodness, wisdom and being by participation in divine goodness, divine wisdom and divine being, respectively. Divine goodness, divine wisdom and divine being are the focal cases of goodness, wisdom and being, respectively. We have these qualities only insofar as we are dependent on God's having their focal cases. Our goodness, our wisdom and our being are mere shadows, as Plato would say, which is why Jesus said that only God is good (Mark 10:18), and St. Catherine of Siena reports God as having told her: "I am he who is and you are she who is not."

I suspect that if we reflect on this, we will find an answer to the question of why it is that we add nothing to the value of God--the world, given that God exists, is in an overall sense no better for having us in it. God's moral goodness is no greater if he creates us than if he does not. This had better be true--what God has chosen to do for us is pure grace, and is in no way necessitated. (And if one thinks that to be truly good, one needs some kind of generation of good, the a-causal timeless begetting of the consubstantial Son by the Father, and the a-causal timeless procession of the consubstantial Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son, should help.)

All this should provide ample ammunition against Rowe's argument that God doesn't exist, because if he did, then for any world he created, he could have created a better, and hence he could be morally outdone. For God's moral worth is not dependent on what he creates; this worth is, simply, infinite, no matter what.