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Everything, Something, and Nothing

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On the face of it, however, these assertions are mutually exclusive either as contradictories or as contraries, since the threefold distinction. "all-some-none" has these kinds of logical properties-properties—"all" and "none" being extreme contraries, "some" (taken in its negative as well as its positive sense) being their common contradictory. Obviously, then, the respects in which these three mutually exclusive terms are applicable to God cannot be the same but must be different-as different—as is already evident from their brief elucidation above. But how is one to give an exact account of this difference?

One approach, perhaps, is to suggest that neither of the three terms can be applied to God except in the sense it has when appropriately qualified by the other two. Thus, if God is said to be "something," the point in saying this is to say that "God" refers to that which, as a distinct center of interaction, is as internally related to other things as they are internally related to it. But, then, "everything" and "nothing" so function as qualifiers of "something" as to make clear that God is (1) the something internally related to all other things, all of which are also internally related to it; and therefore (2) neither a something in the ordinary sense, as that which is internally related merely to some some other things, nor even all such other things as a mere aggregate having no real unity or integrity. Or, again, if God is said to be "everything," what is meant is that "God" refers to that which is all-inclusive, which excludes nothing, which has no external environment, which is not a mere part of some still more encompassing whole. But, then, "something" in this case so qualifies "everything" as to make clear that it is the real unity or integrity of all things, while "nothing" functions to make clear that it is not merely a something, and so on.

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