A number of people find the following thesis plausible:
- Necessarily, the conscious states hosted in a single person at one time are unified in a single conscious state that includes them.
But now consider Christ crucified.
Christ has conscious pain states in his human mind.
Christ has no conscious pain states in his divine mind.
Christ has a conscious divine comprehension state in his divine mind.
Christ has no conscious divine comprehension state in his human mind.
Any conscious state is in a mind.
Christ has no minds other than a human and a divine one.
It seems that (2)–(7) contradict (1). For by (1), (2) and (4) it seems there is a conscious state in Christ that includes both Christ’s pain and Christ’s divine comprehension. But that state wouldn’t be in the divine mind because of (3) and wouldn’t be in the human mind because of (5). But it would have to be in a mind, and Christ has no other minds.
There is a nitpicky objection that (7) might be false for all we know—maybe Christ has some other incarnation on another planet. But that is a mere complication to the argument, given that none of these other incarnations could host the divine comprehension in the created mind.
But the argument I gave above fails if God is outside time. For then the “has” in (4) is compatible with the divine comprehension being atemporal, then it does not follow from (2) and (4) that the divine comprehension and the pain happen at the same time, as is required to contradict (1).
In other words, we have an argument from the Incarnation to God’s atemporality, assuming the unity of consciousness thesis (1).
That said, while I welcome arguments for divine atemporality, I am not convinced of (1).
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