The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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1. Hartshorne argues that the infallibility of God, or of God's knowledge, means "the logical impossibility of a divorce between being and being divinely known" (AD: 286). But, clearly, talk of divine knowledge is symbolic talk, since it involves applying a concept properly applied to human beings, namely, knowledge, to God. Like all symbolic talk, then, its metaphysical (as distinct from its moral) meaning requires clarification or interpretation in non-symbolic terms. The question is, In what terms, exactly, is its meaning to be interpreted?

2.I submit that the pure perfection in terms of which the perfection of divine knowledge, or omniscience, is to be interpreted, is the perfection of being the universal subject, to which all things make a difference. Accordingly, the logical impossibility for which Hartshorne argues is that of a divorce between being and making a difference to the universal subject. To be and to make a difference to this subject, in the sense of being the term of a relation of which it is the subject, are indeed inseparable even in concept. That this can be put symbolically as Hartshorne puts it, therefore, seems clear enough. But one needs to be much clearer than he is about the difference between the pure perfections elucidated by a transcendental metaphysics and the symbolic way of talking about such perfections that is characteristic of the language of religion.

3. Also typical of Hartshorne's argument is his identification of God as both the "creator" and the "sole adequate knower" of anything so much as conceivable (AD: 285). I should say instead that God is both the sole primal source and the sole final end of all things. Whether, or in what sense, God's being the universal object for all subjects, and hence their sole primal source, is symbolically expressible by speaking of God as "creator" is another question, as is the question whether, or in what sense, God's being the universal subject for all objects, and hence their sole final end, can be symbolically expressed by saying that God is their "sole adequate knower."

4. Whether or not God has a certain property is not to be decided, as Hartshorne implies, simply by invoking the rule that "Greatness" [= unsurpassability] means having whatever properties it is better to have than not to have, as compared to other conceivable individuals" (AD: 202). There must be consideration as well of the difference between extraordinary or transcendental properties (these alone being, in my sense, "pure perfections") and other merely ordinary, i.e., categorial, generic, specific, or individual properties. I submit that no property can be predicated of God simply as God, or essentially, unless it either is a transcendental property or is predicated merely symbolically interpreting such.

13 February 2010

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