There are Christians who believe in the existence of abstract objects, such as properties, that are neither grounded in God’s mind (as on Augustine’s view) nor created by God. One challenge on such a view is to make sense of the doctrine of creation which says that God creates everything other than himself.
A natural response is to restrict the quantifiers further. God is not the only exception to being created by God. Abstract objects are also an exception. When our Christian and Jewish forebears said that God created everything, they were only thinking of more ordinary objects than the abstract ones.
I doubt this. Take the beginning of the Creed of Nicaea:
I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible [poiêtên oratôn te pantôn kai aoratôn].
Now, the Fathers at Nicaea were more than aware of Platonic philosophy and of a broad variety of neo-Platonic views on which there were all sorts of uncreated entities, perhaps emanating from the One. Against that background, it seems very plausible that their talk of creation of the invisible is not only meant to tell us about angels, but is also meant to rule out such views. What invisible things reality might contain was mysterious and contentious at the time, and remains mysterious and contentious to our day, and the explicit inclusion of the invisible makes it quite implausible to think that the Creed is meant to apply to a restricted class of beings (apart from the obvious exclusion of God himself).
Furthermore, I think the use of the concrete word poiêtês (maker), as opposed to some more general philosophical term like aitia (cause) or archê (origin, principle) carries the message that God the Father almighty is engaging in intentional agency in producing the visible and the invisible. The agentiality and intentionality implied by the word seems to me to rule out—and quite possibly with the specific intention of doing so—emanationist views.
We are used to reciting the creed in the later version from the Council of Constantinople, where “of heaven and of earth” is added between “maker” and “of all things”. It may be tempting to see “of heaven and of earth” as restricting the visible and the invisible to the concrete occupiers of heaven and of earth. I think that would be a mistake. The Council of Nicaea was an ecumenical council in its own right, and its creed is still normative. If I am right in thinking that the Fathers really wanted to rule all the exotic uncreated entities of neo-Platonism, that remains binding. I would instead say that the Fathers at Constantinople added a clarification that it is not only the mundane things that God created, but also the heavenly. They weren’t narrowing the scope of creation.
4 comments:
This is fascinating. But what if someone replies by saying that, although theism and the Resurrection are independently quite plausible, perhaps these creators of the Nicene creed simply got it wrong in their analysis? There's more to explore, they might think, then what the early Fathers contemplated.
I don't like the idea of abstract objects existing independently of God, due to the classic argument: "who forces God to be morally good? Nobody, because God is the source of morality itself (i.e., moral truths are grounded in God)." Also, I believe divine simplicity is incompatible with the existence of abstract objects that aren't grounded in God.
That being said, if we interpret "maker of all things visible and invisible" too exhaustively, it would have some problematic implications for the Trinity and would directly contradict the very next sentence.
The very next sentence makes it clear that the Son is begotten, not made. So, the Son clearly doesn't fall under the category of "things visible and invisible."
Thus, a proponent of abstract objects could potentially argue that abstract objects aren't included in the category either.
Whenever phrases like "God is the Creator of everything" are used, there is one exception that almost everyone accepts: everything _other than God _. Only Descartes thought that God created himself.
In fact, maybe this strengthens my point. The Fathers are kind of setting up an argument that if the Son is not made, he's God, because the only exception is God.
The argument indeed only applies to those who think that the Nicene or Nicene-Constantinopolian Creed is authoritative. This includes Catholics, the Orthodox, Anglicans and a good number of conservative Protestants. And even among those who do not think it authoritative, I think many would say that it carries significant epistemic weight for Christians.
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