Chris Matthew Responds to an Argument Making the Rounds on Twitter. The Wretched argument.

“Wretched” is an apt term, if not an understatement, for something as difficult as this. Before I begin my rejoinder, though, I’ll reproduce the argument here:

The Argument:

1. God’s Creatorhood is either essential (to God) or contingent.
2. If essential, God is contingent upon creation.
3. If God is contingent upon creation, God is not a se (contra CT).
4. If contingent, God’s Creatorhood is created.
5. If God’s Creatorhood is created, it is created by God (which in turn presupposes God’s Creatorhood).
6. If it is created by God, God could never create without Creatorhood being essential (back to P3, contra CT).

Relational Properties vs. Actual Properties

On my analysis, premises (4) and (5)—and therefore (6)—are problematic. Perhaps (2) as well, although I’ll chalk that up to Andrew Becham.

What’s being missed in the argument? In sum, God creates by speaking and that is an essential property of His.

It seems to me that, insofar as we rightly ground God’s ability to create in His ability to speak, we avoid the problem. I don’t like the language of saying God’s “Creatorhood is created” (P4) because His being a Creator is a relation between Him and His creation. Is it a created relation? Well, it’s not like He formed the relation in the same way that He formed the world. The relation arose from His act of creating.

If He spoke creation into existence, then His Creatorhood is grounded in His speech acts, and speech is an essential property. (The Trinity completely explains why His ability to speak is essential.) His Creatorhood, then, would not be dependent on His ability to create (which is a contingent relation between Him and His creation), but on His essential property of speaking.

God is the Creator in relation to His creation. But the property by which He creates is the property of speech, which is essential. Of course, the property by which He creates is essential, but that property does not necessitate His speaking the world into being (i.e., creating), thus preserving His freedom. Consequently, His basic properties (all of which are ontologically identical to Himself) do not change with the creation of the world, but a covenantal relation is added to Him as He uses His essential property of speaking to create the world.

Clarifying Further

The ability to create is His speaking. The relation is Him as Creator. He speaks ad intra eternally. He creates ad extra by speaking. His ability to create ad extra is grounded in his speaking ad intra. If and when He speaks creation into being, a contingent relation between Him and His creation is formed. Thus, God is the Creator but that title is rightly attributed to Him once He has created based on His relation to His world. But I think I want to resist calling it a property. As such, we escape the bootstrapping problem by (a) dropping Creatorhood down from a property in our conception to a relation, and (b) focusing on His speech as the property ad intra and the mechanism ad extra.

Rectifying the Problem

Given the above explanation, I see the matter thusly:

1. God’s Creatorhood is either essential (to God) or contingent.
2. If essential, God is contingent upon creation.
3. If God is contingent upon creation, God is not a se.
4. If contingent, God’s Creatorhood is brought about at t1.
5. If God’s Creatorhood is brought about at t1, it is brought about by God (which in turn presupposes God’s speech acts).
6. If it is brought about by God, God could never create without speech acts being essential.

If the objection is that there is no substantive difference between “create” and “bring about,” then suffice it to say that it doesn’t make sense to suppose that the relation is a creation in and of itself; it’s not a “thing.” God can do lots of things with His speech, including create. He used His power of speech to create and, in so doing, the relation between Him and the world was established, but He didn’t need to also create the relation as well in some separate act.

Conclusion

There’s only a problem if God’s bringing about of His “having created something” (Creatorhood) is something that’s creative in nature, as opposed to verbal. We might grant that, if God’s act of creation was itself created by God (somehow), then either an infinite regress of created states ensue or Creatorhood is essential to God. But if God’s act of creation was spoken by God from on high, then we can say that speech acts are essential to God without issue.

Appendix A: An Equivocation on Essence?

On a separate note, Andrew Becham offers a different analysis to mine. I think it’s profitable, even if you disagree with the conclusion, and so I would like to reproduce his response:

I suspect there’s a trap leaning on some equivocation with the term “essence.”

Consider the following two conceptions of essentiality:

(E1) “An attribute, y, is essential iff y is identical with the being of God.”

(E2) “An attribute, y, is essential iff God’s works ad extra must be performed pursuant to y.”

(E1) summarizes an important part of what scholastic thinkers say “essential” means. Ironically, I think it’s employed in P2, relativizing God to creation and contradicting his aseity.

(E2), taken by itself, is too broad to be useful. It is an abstraction without reference to the nature of God or his works ad intra and ad extra (e.g., the counsel of God and the freedom of God). I think this notion of essentiality is used in (P6) to exploit the notion of Creatorhood given in (P5). That is, if Creatorhood is non-essential (contingent), then it is not identical with the being of God (E1). Since Creatorhood is not E1, it is E2, and hence creation must be performed in accordance with it. If Creatorhood is E2, that means God creates essentially—that is, according to some rule outside of Himself.

But this does not specify whether He creates or not, so it is indeterminate to God prior to creation whether Creatorhood must be actualized or not. If it must, then it is E2-actualized (since the doctrine of simplicity and E1 rule out God having unactualized potential). But whether He E2-actualizes or not asks whether it is E2 for Him to E2-actualize, which initiates a vicious regress.

I think we can see this proves a point made by Van Til that the doctrine of aseity and independence imply divine simplicity and singularity. If God answers to an abstract principle, contradictions abound. The vicious regress above is analogous to the problem of the unmoved mover: if He is univocally unmoved, how can it be said that He causes anything?

Try (E3): “An attribute is essential iff it is identical to the nature of God according to which God wills and acts freely so as not to deny himself.”

God is the archetype of essence. We shouldn’t define it as something above God and to which He conforms Himself, but rather as a descriptive category used by creatures to talk about God according to what He has revealed. E3 rules out the essentiality of Creatorhood in P2 because that definition speaks against His aseity. It also rules out P6 by stipulating the freedom God has to create or not, but, should He choose to create, He does so in such a way that is consistent with His being. It can be said that He can will to create or will not to create without attacking His simplicity or singularity. I think E3 does better than the other two but sort of stretches the word beyond its usefulness. No scholastic like Dolezal will agree to it. But it’s a more analogically self-aware definition, perhaps more consistent with Scripture and a Reformed view of aseity.

Appendix B: Formalisation

NB. There’s no need to worry if you don’t understand this section. The main points have already been made.

During the development of my critique, I formalised the argument for the purposes of precision and clarity:

1. ∀x(Gx → E(c, x) ∨ C(c, x))
2. Gx ∧ E(c, x) → Ux
3. Gx ∧ Ux → ¬Ax
4. Gx ∧ C(c, x) → Rc
5. Gx ∧ Rc → □E(c, x)

Where:

• G ≡ God
• E ≡ essential to
• C ≡ contingent for
• U ≡ contingent upon creation
• A ≡ a se
• R ≡ created
• c ≡ God’s Creatorhood

(5) and (6) in the original argument collapse into one premise.

The dependency relation in (2) presupposes, amongst other things, something like the following:

1. Necessarily, God exists.
2. Necessarily, God (qua essential Creatorhood) is identical to God’s act of creation.
3. Necessarily, God’s act of creation exists.

Or,

• □∃!x(x = G)
• □(G = C)
• □∃!x(x = C)

For a discussion on the adequacy of this move in the context of DDS and modal collapse, see Tomaszewski (2018). Recall that, to the extent that (2) speaks of God’s act of creation and not God’s speech act, I find it contestable. A satisfactory account of God’s creation must include the fact that there is a relation, R, and property, P, such that P causes R to obtain.

Andrew comments further (cf. Appendix A):

I went straight into discussing essence because nailing that down is more fundamentally important to engaging scholastics in general and to understanding this argument in particular. Creatorhood cannot be an essential attribute of God in any sense. He doesn’t have creation-relative attributes, since that would contradict aseity; we can’t say His attributes are creation-relative when speaking about His works ad intra. But it can be said that He takes on contingent properties ad extra. I think Oliphint’s covenant properties vis-à-vis Calvin’s doctrine of condescension is correct in how it frames relative attributes. They are voluntarily taken on in order to accomplish His ultimate purpose, be it glorification or whatever else. They are creature-relative because they are not necessary concerning God’s immanent nature. Dolezal cannot see this because he has to flatten the creator-creature relation into efficient causation in order to defend his unmoved mover account of immutability and simplicity.

When God actualizes a state of affairs, the affairs are contingent as well as His act of actualizing them. But saying the actualization is creation-dependent because it depends on the state of affairs it is actualizing gets the causal priority exactly backwards. It isn’t contingent upon the givenness of the affairs but upon His decree, which He is free to have actualized or not (at least, prior to committing to do so). We are free to give names to attributes based upon the works ad extra, which are contingent, and which we must recognize ex post facto like creatorhood, redeemerhood, or final-judgehood (or by revealed stipulation).

Is God the final judge, even though the judgment of the living and the dead has not yet happened? I don’t think it’s sensible to say so. So it can’t be part of His essence. Shouldn’t the same go for creatorhood?

I’m not confident that Andrew’s critique fully hits the mark. I’m not committed to his response, even if I appreciate his emphases (e.g., covenantal condescension).