Alasdair MacIntyre channels Bruce Charlton
Alasdair MacIntyre rejects the idea that God knows what we do until we have done it. Because, he says, we are free agents. What we choose cannot perfectly be predicted.
Until the agent finally makes her or his decision her or his future action is undetermined. There is no fact of the matter about what she or he is going to decide or to do, nothing to make any statement about, true or false. Not only does she or he not know what she or he is going to do, no one else can be said to know this either, including God. . . . So, even if an omniscient God does exist, there have been and will be numerous occasions on which he cannot be said to know what will be done or happen, until it is done or happens.
Lecture video here. A Catholic argument against MacIntyre from where I borrowed the above text transcription here.
Speaking of BC, this global critique on the way most of us think (including me most of the time) is worth a read.
I think that the only wholly satisfactory life we can imagine is one where there are no ‘things’, all is alive and conscious, nothing is notalive*.
Furthermore, beineg alive and to some degree conscious; all Beings are part of ‘the drama of salvation’ and capable of theosis.
My belief is that this trajectory from all-alive to all-notalive needs to be regarded as incomplete and incoherent; and therefore the process should be completed by recognizing that this is a living Universe; that the ultimate reality is one of Beings in relationships; but this time doing so by a deliberate act of choice.
Whereas in the past we unconsciously took for granted that we inhabited a world of living Beings; now we should consciously choose to recognize that reality.
As everyone from Aesop to french peasants telling fabliaux to Beatrix Potter to CS Lewis knows, there is a real appeal to talking animals. And just because that’s ‘childish,’ we shouldn’t reject it. Maybe especially because its childish we shouldn’t reject it.
One feels that nature breathes, and the silence of the waste places are pregnant silences.
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | Tags: Bruce Charlton, free agency
dave johnson
November 22, 2022
I want to agree with him but the constant i jection of “her” and “she” (especially the inversion from “he or she” to “she or he”) in there almost makes me want to argue Calvinism against him.
bruce g charlton
November 22, 2022
I read a fair bit of MacIntyre from the late 1980s up to the early years after I became a Christian – about 2010; and got a fair bit of benefit from him – esepcially his negative critique demonstrating the incoherence of of modern ‘morality’.
I haven’t yet watched this video or read the critique – but there is a severe (I would say fatal) problem with incorporating free will into Classic Theology such as Roman Catholic (MacI is a Catholic). Aquinas seems to assert that there definitely is and must be free will; but how this can be in a world where God is supposed to be omniscient and omnipotent, and to have created everything from nothing, is something I cannot make sense of. It must be accepted as A Mystery – which is, I think what most thoughtful Catholics do.
But Mormon theology is perfectly capable of explaining free will, since it posits that free will is a divine attribute, and because all Men are potential gods and co-eternal beings with God the primary creator. In other words, there are at least as many free wills as there are Men and gods. And therefore there can be no omniscience or omnipotence.
Since free will seems to be an essential aspect of love, and therefore Christianity – whereas omni-potence/ science and creation ex nihilo as a property of God seem to have been added some times after the time of Jesus, and from pagan Roman philosophy – Mormon theology wins, in my book!
I also find it very hard /impossible to be consistently animistic – although I try. But I became intellectually convinced of its truth by the very simple arguments that there is no (non-arbitrary) dividing line between living and not-living; therefore everything must be alive or everything notalive… and for a Christian that means everything must be alive.
The matter of not being able to draw a line between living and not-living arose when I was doing theoretical biology research on the origins of life; and I realized the question could not be answered without making arbitrary assumptions that pre-judge the issue.
Ben Pratt
November 22, 2022
As Bruce always says, it comes down to our metaphysical assumptions. I’ve been consciously assuming everything is a being for a while now. It leads to surprising and beautiful moments such as on Good Friday. I took the garbage out and saw the full moon. Addressing the moon, I wondered whether it had been full the night after the crucifixion. The answer came: by definition there is always a full moon during Holy Week. Then it was as if the moon testified to me of the (pre-dawn!) resurrection of our common liege Lord.
The scriptures are full of mentions of the agency of animals that talk, heavenly bodies that stand still, stones that may cry out, mountains, trees, and waves of the sea that obey.
Omniscience – what’s the problem? – buckyinky
November 22, 2022
[…] Ganymede notices that Alasdair MacIntyre has come to resemble Bruce Charlton in his rejection of an omniscient Being […]
Hoyos
November 22, 2022
Alright, I’ve literally never been convinced that God’s omniscience ever works against free will. Dwelling outside of time, in eternity, He sees our choices and actions, why would that necessitate that He therefore controls those choices?
I’ve heard this since high school and I just don’t see it as the “killshot” it’s supposed to be. I can observe your actions without having any impact on them whatsoever. Since God exists outside of time, He is observing. I’ve heard the argument that omniscience and free will conflict often enough I’m suspicious of it.
I’m not saying there isn’t a mystery, I just don’t see why there should be a conflict,
bruce g charlton
November 22, 2022
@buckyinky and Hoyos.
Metaphysical incoherence need not be a problem, and if you don’t ‘feel’ it as a problem then there may not be any need to address the issue.
But I believe that this kind of incoherence is one significant reason why some Christians get into trouble., why their faith is too feeble to withstand the vast onslaught of mainstream materialism; why all the major churches are discarding (or have discarded) real Christianity to become assimilated to global totalitarianism and its imperatives.
It is a bit strange to me to hear Mormons arguing for the obviousness of an ‘omni’ God, since this is not a part of Mormon theology, indeed Mormon theology’s astonishing achievement was exactly about discarding of this omni/ abstract/ monotheist theology and its replacement with a radically-different and incommensurable theology of pluralism and evolution – a theology which regards time as linear, and every being as in-time (since to be a being already entails time and change).
In practice, the main thing is whether a Christian gives full value to free agency of Man; the problem is that an inadequate metaphysical explanation of the possibility of free agency seems usually to make Christianity drift towards a kind of determinism and focus on mere obedience to divine rules – which can be seen in some times and places of history both among Catholics and Calvinists and elsewhere.
I believe that here-and-now Christians must take full personal responsibility for their faith, which entails genuine agency – and anything which weakens that will (because of the general corruption of institutions and corporations) lead out of Christianity and into de facto assimilation to the purposive evil of the mainstream world.
Zen
November 23, 2022
In my experience, it is exceptionally easy to overestimate how much we understand of the scriptures. The words of God are deep, and it may take a lifetime to even scratch the surface. Thus, people who insist on what God cannot do, are on uncertain ground at best. If God says he knows the end from the beginning, that he knows everything, I trust that more than any scholar.
Christ commanding the storm and waves to be still has long impressed me. They understood and obeyed. It is an elegant solution to the problem of consciousness. We are in some distant sense, partners with Nature in the work of God.
Zen
November 25, 2022
12 Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space
13 The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God…
17 And the redemption of the soul is through him that quickeneth all things,…
D&C 88, Emphasis mine
Of course, this is a deep revelation, and I don’t pretend to comprehend all that it says about light.