Consider the following example, chosen for its relevance to the thread. For many classical theists like Aquinas, they stress that God is not, and cannot be, "a being." He's not "one of the beings of this world." Now, when we translate this from the Latin, do you honestly think that Aquinas believes God could be a thing, merely on account of him not being "a being," since the word "being," used as a noun, is only meant to refer to sentient living things? No, he means all things, generically. Trees, rocks, stars, plants, animals, etc. God's not one of them. The phrase "God is not a being" is therefore using the word "being" both as a noun and as a synonym for "thing."

The same can be said of the word "world," as I used above. If you want to be literal about it, it refers simply to the planet Earth. However, as you well know, it can also refer more abstractly and generically to the universe itself or, beyond this, to anything that is, whether in the universe or not. So it seems to me that, far from having committed some spooky "grave error," it is you gentlemen who are being overly pedantic on this point.

Good example Thorongil.

But, how I would express it, is that God is, and cannot be, an existent, or 'something that exists'. Because everything that exists (i.e. 'all manifest objects') are composed of parts, and begin and end in time. So 'everything that exists' is, in this understanding, the 'phenomenal domain' or 'the manifest realm' - what metaphysicians refer to as 'medium size dry goods', which constitutes the domain of exploration of the physical sciences,

Now, when we translate this from the Latin, do you honestly think that Aquinas believes God could be a thing, merely on account of him not being "a being," since the word "being," used as a noun, is only meant to refer to sentient living things? — Thorongil

Not, not 'a thing', nor 'a being', but being, the only actual existent or only real being - the sole reality. Every particular existent or being, is only real insofar as it is 'created by' or grounded in that source of being; God as 'the is in existence'. (This is similar to Advaita Vedanta. 1, 2.)

According to the SEP entry on Duns Scottus Eriugena, there is a sense in which things that are real from one point of view, are unreal from another:

..things accessible to the senses and the intellect are said to be, whereas anything which, ‘through the excellence of its nature’ (per excellentiam suae naturae), transcends our faculties are said not to be. According to this classification, God, because of his transcendence is said not to be. He is ‘nothingness through excellence’ (nihil per excellentiam).

"For an affirmation concerning the lower (order) is a negation concerning the higher, and so too a negation concerning the lower (order) is an affirmation concerning the higher". (Periphyseon, I.444a)

According to this mode, the affirmation of man is the negation of angel and vice versa (affirmatio enim hominis negatio est angeli, negatio vero hominis affirmatio est angeli, I.444b). This mode illustrates Eriugena's original way of dissolving the traditional Neoplatonic hierarchy of being into a dialectic of affirmation and negation: to assert one level is to deny the others. In other words, a particular level may be affirmed to be real by those on a lower or on the same level, but the one above it is thought not to be real in the same way. If humans are thought to exist in a certain way, then angels do not exist in that way.

So the way I am attempting to parse this, is to say that 'existence', or 'those things which exist', pertain to the 'phenomenal realm'. That is the 'horizontal plane', distributed in time and space, which the natural sciences examine. So I would re-phrase the first line of the above quote as 'things accessible to the senses are said to exist.

This is because what is, is something more than 'what exists'. This is because (among other things) it includes the subject as well as the object of analysis. (That is why I say that science is 'what you see out the window', phenomenology is 'you looking out the window'.) The mind synthesises and draws together all of the data of perception and measurement, and that is what constitutes reality for us; it is not simply the aggregate of existents, but also judgement and so on (as per Kant. So number (and the like) are an irreducible component of that, even though from the empiricist's point of view, they're 'only in the mind'.)

That is the sense in which the distinction between 'being' and 'existence' can be discerned; that 'beings' are of another order to what is merely 'existent'.

So now you've moved from justifying your understanding of being from a German text to a Latin one? I remain similarly unimpressed.

You also set up a false dichotomy by completely failing to recognise that the emphasis in Aquinas' thought is not on 'not a being' but on 'not of this world'. Of course Aquinas isn't claiming that God is a thing because he's not a being (and nothing in my definition of being requires that he should be) because he's not saying that God is not a being but that God is a being 'but not as we know it' to borrow a phrase from Star Trek.

I don't understand why you apparently think the only alternative to God being a being is God being a thing. But I agree with Heidegger in rejecting the idea of God being being. The ideas of both things and beings are objectivizations. Things have being, on this objectivized view, as much as beings have being. So, God cannot be being, because being is the being of things and beings, and God is not that. 'Being' is itself an objectification of existence; it is the idea of sheer isness.

Insofar as we are persons we are like God; personalty is the truth of the spirit; beyond all objectification, and beyond all being. It is this understanding that distinguishes Christianity from all other religions. For the understanding I have outlined here I am indebted to two texts: I Am the Truth- Towards a Philosophy of Christianity by Michel Henry and Slavery and Freedom by Nicolas Berdyaev. The way I read them both these texts are saying substantially the same things.

Not, not 'a thing', nor 'a being', but being, the only actual existent or only real being - the sole reality. Every particular existent or being — Wayfarer

Well, then we no longer disagree, it seems to me. I'm satisfied.

So now you've moved from justifying your understanding of being from a German text to a Latin one? I remain similarly unimpressed. — Barry Etheridge

I mentioned the scholastics in the post to which you originally responded. They wrote in Latin, in case you didn't know.

'not a being' but on 'not of this world'. — Barry Etheridge

They amount to the same thing.

but that God is a being 'but not as we know it' to borrow a phrase from Star Trek. — Barry Etheridge

No where does he say this, to my knowledge. A quote, if you please, otherwise I remain skeptical.

I don't understand why you apparently think the only alternative to God being a being is God being a thing. — John

I was saying that this was an implication of Wayfarer's position with respect to these words. I was providing a counter-example.

The Christian teaching is, if we were not capable of evil, we would not be capable of good, because we'd simply be robotic. — Wayfarer

Which is a complete non-sequitur, hence the need for cleverer interlocutors in a dialogue like this.

You have not addressed the issue presented in the allegory of the
garden of Eden. — Punshhh

Well, because the dialogue presented said nothing at all about that. I was presenting a more challenging comment from the non-believer for the context presented.

So let's assume that what you're doing in your comment to me is rather presenting a response to my non-believer's response in that context that you feel is more challenging to the non-believer,

There are two problems with that as a response:

(1) Non-believers obviously are not going to buy the Garden of Eden story in a religious context, So if the Garden of Eden story in a religious context can be taken to say such and such, that's not going to work as an argument solely on the basis of it being a foundational story for the religion. It would only be relevant if something in the story were more or less a logical argument for why something must be the case.

(2) The Garden of Eden story and its relevance for the "problem of good and evil" as you're presenting it doesn't actually meet the objection. Sure, that's the received view in Christianity. But the non-believer is challenging the metaphysical justification for what that received view describes. Why would God make a world where intellect/intelligence would give his creations the ability to imagine and/or carry out evil acts?

Answering "because then we wouldn't be free" wouldn't address the response I gave for the non-believer, because the response is exactly about that comment. It points out that the ability to imagine and/or carry out evil acts isn't required for freedom.

It's not a non sequitur. What I was responding to was this:

God could have simply given us a different limited framework, one in which we do not have the ability or desire to sin/do evil, but where we're free to do all sorts of things that are not sins, that are not evil.

The point about this remark, is that it demonstrates lack of knowledge of what the Christian understanding of 'freedom of the will' means, and why it is significant. The basic drift is that humans are free agents and can, indeed must, choose a course of action. If they were led to it, or compelled to do it, or given no choice but to do it, then they would be robotic, i.e. they wouldn't be acting freely. The fact that humans are endowed with individual autonomy is one of the distinctive attributes of Christian philosophy.

I wouldn't call that a general Christian understanding but rather a Roman Catholic understanding.

Calvinism in particular seems to explicitly deny free will in relation to the power to choose sin vs not-sin. Life is a process of either waiting to discover, or striving to discover, whether the decision God made before he created us about whether we would be saved was a Yes or a No.

I don't think that is an accurate depiction of the Calvinist view, although it would be useful if someone with knowledge of it could respond.

I have done a bit more research on this. I found the following on a Calvinist website:

Objection: IIf man has no free will, i.e. God elects and controls everything including man's sinful acts, how can you not conclude that God is responsible for sin and evil? That God is the author of sin and evil?

Response: Calvinists do not deny free will. We affirm that people are free to choose what they want to choose. We state that the unbelievers nature is so corrupt that he does not have the ability in his own will, to choose to follow God.

This is why the Scriptures say...

“There is none righteous, not even one; 11 There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God; 12 All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good. There is not even one,” (Romans 3:10-12).

"But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised," (1 Cor. 2:14).

So, I think you're actually correct - that in effect, Calvinism denies that humans are capable of choosing good. I think that the implication of their doctrine, is that only the elect are able to choose the good, and that everyone else will be damned. Which, I think, is a strong reason for rejecting Calvinism.

Whereas, I would interpret the first of the two verses as a kind of rhetorical flourish on the part of Paul; i.e. not to be interpreted literally.

The basic drift is that humans are free agents and can, indeed must, choose a course of action. — Wayfarer

And indeed, I was not positing freedom any different than that. The only way to make the notion of freedom distinct from what I proposed would be to say that necessarily, freedom entails making at least some choices between good and evil. But in context, that would be question-begging, because what's at issue is why a God would make a world where choices include evil.

It's possible to make a world where humans are free agents and can, indeed must, choose a course of action, but where there would either be no desire or no ability to choose evil courses of action. You can have a potential infinity of choices that are not evil, however.

But that still amounts to a kind of artifice. Maybe you could say that freedom requires the real risk of failure. If there's no risk, then there's no real freedom; we are still essentially puppets, or inhabitants of an artificial environment.

But that still amounts to a kind of artifice. — Wayfarer

I have no idea what that's saying, really.

God can create the world as God wants to create the world, which is an idea the topic creator explicitly asserted in the dialogue they presented.

Maybe you could say that freedom requires the real risk of failure. If there's no risk, then there's no real freedom; we are still essentially puppets, or inhabitants of an artificial environment.

Unless "real risk of failure" refers to the possibility of doing evil--in which case we're back to question-begging territory, then there's a real risk of failure in a world where we have freedom but can not do evil acts. After all, attempting but failing to do a good or neutral act doesn't imply that one does evil.

I don't know what an "artificial environment" refers to.

Again, we're talking about God making a world of His choosing, which is what the TC's dialogue posits with the world as it is, where we can do evil.

Whereas, I would interpret the first of the two verses as a kind of rhetorical flourish on the part of Paul; i.e. not to be interpreted literally. — Wayfarer

Then I would venture to suggest that you interpret it wrongly. There is absolutely no doubt that Paul believed that every act of human will is sin, that no act of human will could ever count as a step toward God or to the fulfillment of God's will and it is therefore always a step away from God, a turning of the back on God.

But that still amounts to a kind of artifice. Maybe you could say that freedom requires the real risk of failure. If there's no risk, then there's no real freedom; we are still essentially puppets, or inhabitants of an artificial environment. — Wayfarer

But surely there cannot ever be absolute freedom in any physical Universe. Popular as the phrase appears to be amongst the positive thinking brigade it is not literally true that "you can do anything" and never could be. There is no such thing as infinite choice and that, as I've suggested before, is no bad thing. Greater choice is greater paralysis. Infinite choice would be infinite paralysis and that is the very negation of freedom.

God can create the world as God wants to create the world, which is an idea the topic creator explicitly asserted in the dialogue they presented. — Terrapin Station

I don't believe in that model of 'God'.

There is absolutely no doubt that Paul believed that every act of human will is sin — Barry Etheridge

It is curious, then, that Catholics and Calvinists both believe in the Bible, yet Calvinism is fatalistic in a way that Catholicism is not.

I don't think the religious idea of freedom is 'being able to do anything', or being able to act without constraint, or a matter of choice. It is freedom from fear, doubt, dread, anxiety, and, ultimately, death.

Calvinists do not deny free will. We affirm that people are free to choose what they want to choose. We state that the unbelievers nature is so corrupt that he does not have the ability in his own will, to choose to follow God.

I would love for a Calvinist to turn up and explain why they believe that the last sentence doesn't contradict the first. Whence came the so-corrupt nature of the unbeliever? Did they make it themselves? If so was it in their nature to fashion their nature to be like that?

The middle sentence is an interesting transition. To say somebody is free to choose what they want to choose is something that even the most rusted-on hard determinist can agree with. The point of course is that - according to the determinist - they cannot choose what it is that they want (they have no control of their 'wanter'). This is very different from what St Augustine or other devoted RC proponent of libertarian free will might say, which is that the unbeliever is free to want to believe anything.

It is curious, then, that Catholics and Calvinists both believe in the Bible, yet Calvinism is fatalistic in a way that Catholicism is not. — Wayfarer

It is always worth reflecting on the fact that from the point of view of the Eastern Churches there is barely any difference between Catholic and Protestant at all. Both are built on a theology which pictures God as absolute monarch and judge directly electing those who will be saved by vertical acts of power. And that has far less to do with the Bible than the political landscape within which the western Church grew, especially after its (un)holy alliance with the Emperor Constantine. Calvinism represents something of an extreme of this theology but it is far less remote from Catholicism than you imagine. The saints that are appointed by God in Calvinism may lack the capital letter that denotes their Catholic counterparts but how they are appointed is essentially identical.

I would also advise caution in saying that any Church 'believes in the Bible'. They certainly believe that the Bible authorises their particular understanding of theology, soteriology etc. but that is nearly always a reading back into the text beliefs that are formed outside it. We are familiar with this process in creationists and so-called fundamentalists today but the truth is that it has been going on from the very earliest days of Christianity in the established churches as well as the sects, and schismatics, and 'heretics'.

Agree.

I see Calvinism (and Protestantism generally) as a radical break with Catholicism. (I'm reading an interesting historical study The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society by Brad S. Gregory on this very point. )

Orthodoxy is different to both Catholicism and Protestantism in many key respects, not least in not accepting the 'doctrine of vicarious atonement'. But I think Calvin was a really sinister character - not for nothing is he referred to as the 'Ayatollah of Geneva'. (It's worth reading up on the execution of Servetus.)

I also believe that a vital aspect of religion was lost in the original formation of the orthodox Church, with the suppression of the Gnostics. That is not to say that Gnosticism (which is not in any case a school of thought) was an unalloyed good, but the experiential dimension which it embodied, which was symbolically profound, was part of what was lost. I think that some of the early Bishops, particularly Iraneus and Tertullian, embodied an authoritarian attitude which forever marked the way Christianity developed.

To be free of belief is not the same as either for or against a God . It is different and that is the beauty of it.

God doesn't always give everyone those kinds of great experiences.

But if you fast and pray and get serious enough, eventually He will reveal Himself to you in a clear and distinct way.

You just have to persist in true humility before Him and humbly wait for His timing. None of us deserve any special revelation. He created us, gave us life we didn't deserve, and yet we have all rebelled against Him, killing His prophets, even crucifying His only Son.

He loves you, like big-time! But you might have to go through a few months, even a few years, of diligently searching, praying, fasting, meditating, reading the scriptures, before He gives you that "road to Damascus experience."

In the mean time, the historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ should be enough to bring you to faith. An empty tomb and devout followers willing to live in poverty and ridicule for the rest of their lives to preach that message - even going to martyrdom and death. The immediate and rapid expansion of the Christian faith amidst such great persecution can only be explained one way!