Is "Jesus is God" necessarily true, necessarily false, or a contingent proposition?
If you take as a given that God is a necessary being, does it follow that the Christian belief that Jesus is identical with God is either necessarily true or necessarily false? My reasoning here is that it follows from "God is a necessary being" that:
1. If something is identical with God, then it is a necessary being
2. If something is not a necessary being, then it is impossible for it to be identical with God.
According to this reasoning, it seems like either Jesus is necessarily God, or it is impossible for Jesus to be God (given the premise that God is a necessary being). A third possibility is that my reasoning here is faulty. My questions are as follows:
1. Have I made a logical error, and if so, where?
2. If I have not made a logical error, how would I set about determining whether the necessary truth is "Jesus is God" or "Jesus is not God?"
1. If something is identical with God, then it is a necessary being
2. If something is not a necessary being, then it is impossible for it to be identical with God.
According to this reasoning, it seems like either Jesus is necessarily God, or it is impossible for Jesus to be God (given the premise that God is a necessary being). A third possibility is that my reasoning here is faulty. My questions are as follows:
1. Have I made a logical error, and if so, where?
2. If I have not made a logical error, how would I set about determining whether the necessary truth is "Jesus is God" or "Jesus is not God?"
Comments (81)
(Your argument takes the form iF p THEN q....NOT q...therefore NOT p....which is invalid)
Hey fresco, you are right to point out that @CurlyHairedCobbler presented an argument that seems to take the form:
[math]
{P\rightarrow Q, \neg Q}\vdash \neg P
[/math]
However, this is different from affirming the consequent, which has the form:
[math]
{P\rightarrow Q, Q} \vdash P
[/math]
This is a fallacy, since [math]P[/math] could be either true or false (given [math]Q[/math] is true). The first, however, is a valid inference. The contrapositive [math]\neg Q\rightarrow \neg P[/math] is true. In fact, the contrapositive is logically equivalent to the conditional [math]P\rightarrow Q[/math].
I hope this helps!
This is interesting. I think (1) and (2) are uncontroversial.
However, there seems to be an issue with the claim "Jesus is necessarily God". This says something different. Namely, the necessity operator, here, applied to an identity. When I say that God exists necessarily, what would follow is that if Jesus is God, then Jesus exists necessarily.
I think it is a further step in reasoning to speak of Jesus being necessarily identical to God. That is, if God is a necessary being, then God exists in every possible world. Should Jesus be God, then Jesus is identical with God in every possible world. So, yes, necessarily Jesus is God. Again, however, I am not sure that this is a controversial claim. It seems controversial, but claims of the sort would apply to any necessarily existing being.
But perhaps I missed something...
A note from the SEP entry on John Scottus Eriugena. He was an early medieval philosophical theologian and translator of arcane Greek texts. He says of 'the nothingness of God':
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scottus-eriugena/#3
This insight was practically lost to philosophical theology by late medieval times, although it turns up again in the negative theology of Paul Tillich:
https://www.doxa.ws/Being/Ground_Being.html
Point taken !
Re your argument, you're substituting a claim about necessary beings with claims about identification. I'm not sure why you'd not realize that the two are not at all the same thing.
You could say that if Jesus is God then Jesus is a necessary being. But that's not at all the identification claim you're asking about.
What you should be looking at instead is arguments about identity/identification a la rigid designators. Personally I think a lot of rigid designator analysis is a mess, but at least it has to do with what you're asking about. See, for example, section 1.1 here ("Names, Ordinary Descriptions, and Identity Statements"): https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rigid-designators/#NamOrdDesIdeSta
Hey Tim,
It is absolutely true that there is the possibility for there to exist multiple, distinct necessary beings. However, neither claims (1) or (2) from the OP are affected by this. That is, there could exist more than one necessary being and both (1) and (2) can still be true.
As to the more recent question, i.e., on the status of 'necessity'. A necessary being is a being that exists in every possible world. That is, a world in which such a being did not exist is not logically possible, i.e., it would be inconceivable.
Given that this is the nature of necessity, the person who wishes to argue for the necessary existence of a being has a daunting task ahead of them.
I hope this helped!
Interesting. As I read the OP, this was the only controversial claim I came across. Could you re-state what you think the intended claim is? You would be correct, I take it, that the original argument would not establish a deeper, intended proposition.
Given how uncontroversial the claims seem to be, I think you are right to say that the intended claims are different from those mentioned. I just am not sure what they would be.
Thanks!
I think "Jesus is God" is necessarily necessary for the believers of Christianity.
I think I can try and help here, in terms of the 'history of ideas'.
I don't see how this criticism is relevant. If God is a necessary being, then everything about him is necessary. If God is a triune being with Jesus being one part of the Trinity, then God is necessarily a triune being and Jesus is necessarily God. This all just follows from the logic of necessity.
Of course, from the point of view of our limited knowledge, we don't know if God is a necessary being or if Jesus is God, and therefore we cannot say that Jesus is necessarily God; all we can say, to reiterate, is that it logically follows that if God is a necessary being and if Jesus is God, then Jesus is necessarily God.
As far as I am concerned, there is no point in debating this. Nobody will convince anyone else of their point. The debate only leads to strife and bitterness. Frustration. Or worse. (Such as animosity and name-calling.)
I wish instead of trying to come out triumphant in this debate, we'd learn from the bottom of our hearts to accept that others' views on the subject are completely different from ours, and to respect this differentness.
This is my opinion, and of course I offer it as a peace branch to bury the topic and the hatchet with it.
You'd have to explain how that follows.
If the evening star ("Hesperus") were necessary because, say, strong determinism were true, would that imply that the evening star is necessarily the morning star ("Phosphorus")? It seems like it could have turned out to be the case that Phosphorus was a different necessary star.
Anselm's argument is given in Wikipedia as follows:
(However I would add the caveat that the expression that 'God exists' ought to be written as 'God is', because if indeed God is a transcendental reality, then 'existence' is what God is transcendent in respect of. Put another way, anything that exists, can also not exist, because all existing beings are contingent. What necessarily exists, is not contingent, therefore a necessary being is something to which the attribute of 'existence' can't be applied.)
Aka "pretending that we can define God into existence."
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the response. I am not quite sure I know exactly what you intend to mean by your first sentence. That is, I am not sure what exactly "necessity precedes being" means, and why this should follow from the mere fact of a being that necessarily exists.
It seems to me that should something exist necessarily, all we are saying is that it is logically inconceivable to imagine a possible world in which such a being does not exist. Maybe we can do better with less technical language: if a being exists necessarily, then what I am saying is that I simply cannot imagine a situation in which such a being cannot exist. If I think I am imagining such a situation, I must be mistaken, since such a situation is simply incoherent.
Mathematics is typically the best way to understand necessity. It is necessary that a Euclidean triangle have interior angles that sum to 180 degrees. That is, I cannot conceive of a triangle (in Euclidean space) with interior angles that sum up to more (or less) than 180 degrees. If I think I am doing so, then I am simply mistaken, or I am not imagining a triangle at all.
I am not convinced that there is anything problematic about speaking of necessity in this simple way, and extending our talk of necessity to the existence of objects. If I imagine a situation where one object has the property [math]P[/math], and some object that does not have this property, then there necessarily exist at least two distinct objects.
Now if I want to say that an objects exists necessarily, I am simply saying that this object exists in every possible situation, and that I cannot conceive of a situation in which such an object does not exist.
Now it very well may be that no object satisfies this criterion. But I am not sure that there is anything problematic about it. Maybe you can clarify your position?
Also:
I must be misunderstanding this statement, because on the face of it, it seems obviously false to me. Surely, it is entirely possible that there exist only contingent objects, and that there is no object (persons/beings, etc. included) that exists necessarily. Thus, if there is no object that exists necessarily, it does not follow that nothing exists.
Your last remarks also give me the impression that we are both using the word 'necessity' in different ways, and that there is no dispute here. This may be why I am not understanding your position. Necessary existence has nothing to do at all with causation. An object can exist necessarily and be entirely causally innocuous. That is, the object need not enter into any causal relations at all.
Some argue that certain abstract objects exist necessarily. Mathematical structures/objects would be a prime example.
One obvious question is whether there are any actual objects to which this this applies. Take your example of the Euclidean triangle - it can be demonstrated by a physical drawing, which is an object, but the principle itself can't be said to be 'an object' in any sense but the metaphorical, can it?
Other logical principles and laws and 'arithmetical primitives' (foundational concepts in arithmetic which cannot be further defined) are likewise not objects in any sense other than the metaphorical. They can be applied to objects, insofar as the attributes of the objects in question can be made to conform to them, which is fundamental to modern scientific method.
Quoting Kornelius
That's the sense in which an a priori truth is a necessary truth, is it not? And that also is assumed by modern scientific method, which seeks mathematical certainty in respect of those matters it investigates.
So the point of all the above is that 'necessity' in this sense, is a logical, not an empirical, matter. Bearing this in mind, caution is required when we talk of 'objects' and 'beings' in this context, as it is not altogether clear that what we are discussing is an objective matter.
Ah, so you're asking for an explanation! :wink:
How it follows from what? From your presuppositions, I suppose! :roll:
You would need to know a little bit about the history of Western philosophy to know what the ideas of necessity and necessary being logically entail. Perhaps read some Spinoza or Aquinas.
You probably won't get it, but I'll risk wasting a little time and effort explaining it anyway, especially as this is also for @tim wood. A distinction was drawn between contingent beings and necessary being. A contingent being is one whose being depends on others, that is on contingent circumstance. If your parents had had sex five minutes later than they did, chances are you would not have existed; you are a contingent being. Everything about you, all your attributes are thus contingent.
A necessary being is one whose existence depends upon nothing outside itself. Obviously no physical being could be a necessary being, because a necessary being cannot come into existence, since it necessarily always and forever exists. It follows that whatever qualities such a being possesses are also necessary. So, as I said already, IF God is a necessary being, and IF God is a triune being, and IF Jesus Christ is God as one arm of the trinity, then Jesus is necessarily God.
See above.
Yes. I'm not anti explanations. I'm anti "there's no explanation for x, therefore . . ." arguments sans criteria for explanations. I go into detail about all of that in the posts you're not interested in.
Quoting Janus
Patronizing mode. Aren't you familiar with my background?
At any rate, so you're not using "necessary" in the general philosophical sense where we it's conceivable to say that the morning star and evening star might be metaphysically necessary?
And in the limited sense in which you're using the term, Jesus was not physical?
I think that’s a sound paraphrase. Perhaps a question that could be asked is this: is there anything known to science which conforms to this description? I think the answer is ‘no’. But there are indeed necessary truths.
So would you say that the "necessary connection" component of Hume's analysis of causal relations doesn't make much sense?
Do you buy that there are different sorts of necessity, such as metaphysical necessity?
This is a Kit Fine paper I've linked to before:
https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/philosophy/documents/faculty-documents/fine/Fine-Kit-necessity.pdf
thanks! Looks very much on point, will find time to read it.
//interestingly, I've encountered work by his daughter, Cordellia Fine.//
I'm sure there will be many other opinions expressed here, but mine is this. Your mistake is to apply logic and reason to a being whose existence is not accompanied by evidence. I.e. the sort of evidence that scientists would consider valid and useful. Lacking evidence, your use of reason and logic stops at the first hurdle: without evidence, you cannot proceed; The End.
(Thanks for the reply!)
Of course it can. While it is still an open dispute in the philosophy of mathematics, ontological realists argue for the existence of abstract mathematical objects. This is not a metaphor at all. There are very good reasons to think that abstract objects do exist. Mathematical objects would exist necessarily.
Quoting Wayfarer
Treating mathematical objects as mere metaphor is not a very easy position to defend. One would have a difficult time reconstructing mathematics from this starting point. I am not saying things are obvious here at all, but you are too quick to settle on this position.
Moreover, mathematical objects and structures are typically not constructed/invented/discovered (I want this proposition to be philosophically neutral) for science. Quite the opposite is true: the application of mathematics is typically after the fact, and the vast abstract structures of mathematics are not necessary for science at all. Science requires a very small, strict subset of the mathematical structures and objects we already know about.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree with the first sentence: if there are such things as a priori truths, then yes they would most certainly be necessary truths.
I disagree with the second sentence: science is successful precisely because it does not demand that scientific knowledge meet deductive standards (standards which are held in mathematics, philosophy/logic or the formal sciences more broadly). There is nothing deductively certain in the sciences. Scientific knowledge is falsifiable, and thus not certain. Only formalized theories that follow struct deductive reasoning like mathematics or logic can claim certainty.
This makes sense, as no scientific proposition is a logically necessary one. All scientific propositions, if true, are only contingently true. And even if contingently true, we cannot be certain of their truth. At best, we can only be highly confident that the proposition is true.
Quoting Wayfarer
Of course necessity is a logical matter. But this does not preclude the possibility of necessarily existant objects and beings at all.
I also do not understand what you mean by "discussing an objective matter". Logic is entirely objective. In fact, logic and mathematics are not only objective, they are deductive. We can be certain of the truths of logic and mathematics in a way we cannot about empirical propositions.
There is nothing senseless about the proposition "God is a necessary being". It could very well be true, as it could very well be false (on the assumption that the word "God" has a sense, i.e. is meaningful -- but that is a separate matter).
In fact, I would say that I am fairly certain about the following proposition (on the commonly understood meaning of 'God'): "If God exists, then God necessarily exists". The proposition "God exists" is still not established, however.
Moreover, it seems to me that you want to have a very constrained interpretation of the word "objective". Objectivity has only to do with truth-values. That is, a proposition is objective if it is true or false, whether or now we know whether it is true or false. A proposition that isn't objective is one that does not have a determinate truth-value.
We should not take disagreement as a sign of subjectivity. We can disagree about objective propositions (we all do!). We should also not think that empirical propositions are the only set of objective propositions. This is not true at all. Not only are logical and mathematical propositions clearly objective, I would extend the category of objective propositions to any set of propositions where reasons can be brought to bear. I would certainly include ethics in this account. Aesthetics most likely (though I know nothing about aesthetics). Propositions that would be excluded, for example, would be propositions of personal taste, for example. "I like this movie", "this hamburger tastes awful, yuck!", etc. I think (hope) this all makes sense? Let me know what you think.
That being said, I think that most of the disagreement and issues encountered in this thread turns on a mistake about what we think is actually being said in the OP. What is being said is not controversial at all. It is acceptable to all theists, atheists and agnostics.
I'm not saying numbers are metaphors, I'm saying the use of the word 'object' is a metaphor! I myself am a strong (and practically lone) advocate for mathematical realism on this forum. But there's a very important philosophical principle at stake.
Consider a number - say 7. In what sense is that 'an object'? 'Well, there it is', you might say, pointing to it - but what you're pointing at is a symbol. Furthermore that symbol could be encoded in any number of media, written in a variety of scripts, - 'seven', VII, 00000111, and so on. But the referent, what the symbol '7' signifies, is always the same. And that's what I'm saying is not 'an object'; it's more like a constituent, than an object, of thought.
As regards objectivity - I'm inclined to say that arithmetical proofs, and so on, are also likewise 'objectively true' only by way of metaphor. The point about an arithmetical proof is that it is logically compelling - again, the means by which we determine its veracity are purely internal to the nature of thought, they're not 'objective' in the strict sense of 'pertaining to an object or collection of objects'. In fact we often appeal to mathematics to determine what is objectively true; there's a sense in which mathematical reasoning is "prior" to empirical validation, in that the mathematics provide a reference to determine what is objectively happening.
So I'm bringing out the role that is accorded to 'objectivity' because I think that attitude is distinctively modern and part of our culture's implicitly naturalistic outlook.
Quoting Kornelius
That's rather outside of scope for this thread (my fault!) but a very interesting question. Personally, I think the reason that physics is regarded as paradigmatic for science, is precisely because mathematical physics provides the clearest correlation between mathematical, a priori certainty and physical outcomes. Recall the many astounding predictions of modern physics, often not confirmed for decades afterwards, until the instrumentation catches up with the mathematically-derived prediction. How many times have we seen the headline "Einstein proved right again!"? There was another one recently. Einstein himself said that "the most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible". I agree that it's a deep question, but again it's a philosophical question, not a scientific one. And I think a clue to why it's "incomprehensible" is that it's something for which there isn't a naturalistic explanation (for which, see this paragraph.)
If a being does not exist then it cannot be necessary, because since its being depends on nothing outside itself it must exist or fail the criteria.
This is just a matter of definition: of the logic of what is meant by "necessary". Think about it another way: a necessary being has necessary being, which just is to say that it necessarily exists. So it must always have existed and must always continue to exist, since nothing outside itself can affect it.
None of this is to suggest we must agree with the Ontological Argument. We are only thinking about what the notion of a necessary being logically entails, and this says nothing about whether there really is a necessary being.
It has nothing to do with being "patronizing"; I have no idea about your "background". If you are familiar with Spinoza and Aquinas, then why are citing, as you seem to be, an argument about reference from philosophy of language, an argument, that is, from a totally different context?
Also, what relevance is the question about the physicality of Jesus? Nothing you say here has any bearing whatsoever on what I have been saying about the logic of necessity; but then that doesn't surprise me in the least.
It's patronizing to assume that someone isn't familiar with something.
I've mentioned my background here many times. But okay.
Re why I'm referencing the rigid designation stuff, I explained that already. I don't agree that God being "necessary" has anything to do with whether "Jesus is God" is a necessary proposition.
Quoting Janus
The relevance is that you gave nonphysicality as a criterion for metaphysical necessity. You wrote "Obviously no physical being could be a necessary being," So that means that if Jesus was a physical being, he can't be a necessary being.
Obviously to say that Jesus is God is to say that Jesus is not merely a physical being. If you were familiar with Spinoza you would know that for him God is a necessary being and that the physical and mental are not substances (God is the sole substance) but attributes or modes.
For Spinoza nature just is God; which means that nature is necessary. Nature for Spinoza is not substantially physical but rather physicality is merely one of its modes. In Christian theology the person Jesus is a unique manifestation of the Christ, which is one "arm" of the trinity which God is.
Okay, so you meant, "Obviously no physical being that's only a physical being could be a necessary being"?
Thank you for that article, it definitely answered my question. It seems that if A and B are two names for the same thing, then A is necessarily identical with B. A and B need not be names for God for this to be the case. If my real name is Casey Gettier, then it's necessarily true that "Curly Haired Cobbler is Casey Gettier," because they are names for the same being. If it's not, then it's necessarily false. In this case, it is necessarily false, because I don't want to give my real name out, and also because Casey Gettier is an obvious pun.
This also seems to mean that just because something is necessarily true, that doesn't mean that all truths about it can be discovered a priori, with no empirical knowledge.
Quoting Kornelius
Good point. Some philosophers have stipulated that numbers are necessary beings. If this is the case, then the number two is necessary, it is necessarily identical with some things (the square root of 4, 1+1, 3-1), and it is necessarily not identical with some other things (the number 100, 1-1, 3+1). But there are also things that the number two is identical with contingently, such as "the meaning of the Spanish word dos" or "the number represented by the symbol 2." One could imagine a possible world in which Arabic numerals had never been adopted, or Spanish had developed differently such that dos meant something else. If the meaning of the Spanish word dos is the number two, then the meaning of the Spanish word dos is a necessary being. That doesn't mean that the number two is necessarily the meaning of the Spanish word dos, because, again, Spanish could have developed differently.
Glad it helped even if Janus is arguing that it has nothing to do with what you were asking.
Quoting Terrapin Station
You're dreaming: I haven't made any mention of the article.
So then why bring up whether Jesus is merely physical. Physical things are not merely physical in this context--that would be understood without needing to specify it. So was Jesus physical?
This way of thinking about necessary being really has little to do with the Scholastic or Spinozistic conceptions of necessary being. For one thing, for Spinoza, a necessary being must be infinite, because it must be independent of all contingent being. This means that it can be limited by nothing and nothing is "outside" it. Everything finite must ultimately be dependent upon it for its existence. It also follows form this logical that there cannot be more than one necessary being.
The idea that a necessary being is a being which must exist in all worlds is really not the same. It is rather the opposite from the Scholastic perspective; a necessary being is a being which all worlds must exist within.
Nothing you have said has anything to do with what I understand to be the scholastic logic of necessity as I outlined it. (I'm happy for the outline to be corrected by anyone who knows more about the subject than I do, by the way).
The logic is the logic; it's about how we can coherently and consistently think about it and it doesn't matter whether there actually is a necessary being; which seems to be what you want to, inappropriately, argue about.
What you have been saying seems to indicate that you are not familiar with Scholastic and Spinozistic thought. If you are familiar with those, then I can't understand why you would say the things you have been saying, and asking the questions you have been asking.
The point is that you wrote "Obviously no physical being could be a necessary being," so if Jesus was a physical being (not merely physical of course, as that's categorically ruled out per your comments), he couldn't be a necessary being.
Otherwise we need to revise "Obviously no physical being could be a necessary being"
Because (a) I have necessarily have to take the initial post in the thread to only be asking under the rubric of someone else's thought, (b) I have to believe that the texts in question (re scholasticism etc.) are coherent, not at all confused, etc., and (c) I have to read your comments so that no matter what you actually write, they have to be passable under (b)?
Your objection seems obtuse, in any case, because I said in my original outline "IF Jesus is God", and since it is obvious that Jesus as person is thought of as being finite and God is thought as being infinite, then the very idea of Jesus being God must entail thinking of Jesus as something more than a merely finite being.
What would be excluded as potentially being necessary in that case? (So that you'd point out that "Obviously no physical being could be a necessary being"?)
I have no clear idea what you are asking.
You seem to be asking whether you need to respond to the OP "under the rubric of someone else's thought"? Well, no, obviously. But I responded to your talk about "identification" by pointing out that it is irrelevant to the logic and if you want to respond to that then obviously it should be under the rubric of that logic, at least, even if you want to show that it is inconsistent; which you haven't attempted to do.
If you think, that is, that "texts in question" (I haven't cited any specific texts but I take you to be referring to Scholastic texts in general and Spinoza's texts) are "incoherent" or "confused" then you should provide some citations and show just how you think they are confused or incoherent. I doubt you will attempt to do that, since you have not even attempted to show how the outline I presented is confused or incoherent.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Under the scholastic conception of necessary being, anything that depends for its existence on anything else, which obviously all physical beings do, could not be a necessary being.
I think as a point of mainstream Christian doctrine, Jesus Christ is said to be both fully human and fully divine. That is called the 'hypostatic union'. To say that he is a partially divine, and partially human, is a dualist heresy (of which Nestorianism is an example.)
Everything is a God, Including us, anything, etc.
What i'm trying to say is God is indeed Exist, so exist that it safe to say it can be us and can be everything. God is not a being since being itself is 'exist/presence' and God is more like a 'Something' thats not present but also present and it sticks to everything. So how matter you point everything in this universe you always point at a God.
That's wrong, though. Even when we're talking about necessity in the context of Spinoza, say.
Thanks Wayfarer for your response!
Indeed, I would say that the symbol "7" refers to the object 7. I do not use the term "object" metaphorically at all. The semantics of arithmetical language certainly attributes to semantic value (an object) to these terms. How else would they figure into identity claims?
If they are not objects, we must explain arithmetical propositions in some other way. For example, [math]2+2=4[/math] is true, but what makes it true? What are the referents of each expression? The standard replay is that the semantic value of "+", "=" are relations/functions, and "2", "4" refer to objects. However, we could give a different semantics: one which takes more seriously the adjectival use of number expressions. Consider the sentence: "There are four chairs in the room" v.s. "The number of chairs in the room is four". In the first, "four" is an adjective, and maybe we treat "four" as a second-level concept (this has been tried, but the view has problems). The second sentence is a straight-forward objective use, so the term "four" is an object.
If we want to say that our number talk, whether in everyday language or in arithmetical language, is misleading, and that the true nature of our numerical expressions is that they refer to second level concepts, or perhaps to constituents of thought as you suggested, then we need to realize how difficult such views actually are to sustain.
Take your position: a numerical expression actually refers to a constituent of thought. This is problematic, since it cannot mean the constituent of my thought or your thought. This would violate the universality of mathematical propositions. Then you might mean it is the constituent of some Thought, with a capital T, but what would that mean exactly? I am not sure this view doesn't also have pretty thought metaphysical and epistemological assumptions we're being asked to swallow.
Quoting Wayfarer
Even if we determine the veracity of logical and mathematical propositions by reason alone, this doesn't make these propositions any less objectively true. I think you are trying to redefine objectivity to suit a particular position, i.e., it must "pertain to objects" and you are refusing to admit that mathematical propositions involve objects. Even if they don't involve objects, there is no way mathematical propositions are not objective. They are paramount objectively true propositions.
Here is a view, let me know what you think. Objective propositions are propositions that are truth-evaluable. They do not have to refer to objects at all. This is has to be a mistake. If I say "the use of the copula in English is to ...." or "the word "English" starts with the letter "E"", then I I am using objective propositions. They can be determinately true or determinately false, but they do not seem to "involve objects" in the way that you are describing. The same would be true of many propositions that do not involve objects.
My apologies if this other conception of necessity was being deployed. I know very little of it. I was using the contemporary idea of necessity (as it is understood in current metaphysics and logic).
Was this a historical discussion?
Let's grant the initial premise for the sake of conversation:
Assume that "God is a necessary being" is a true statement. What does it tell us? What do we mean by the terms "God" and "being" in this sentence? What do we mean by the modifier "necessary" in such sentences?
What is a necessary being? What other kinds of being are there, that are not necessary beings? What other kinds of thing, apart from beings, may be necessary or not-necessary? How can we tell whether a being is necessary or not-necessary? How can we tell what counts as "a being"? How shall we resolve disputes that arise with respect to such matters?
You seem to suggest that, if there is such a thing as a necessary being, then there can only be one such thing, as any such thing must be identical to God. On what grounds do you make this claim?
Granting that "God is a necessary being" is a true statement, composed of terms as yet unaccounted for, you ask, does it follow that "the Christian belief that Jesus is identical with God" is either necessarily true or necessarily false?
What is "the Christian belief that Jesus is identical with God"? Is there only one such belief, or are there a wide range of such beliefs, perhaps not all compatible with each other, held by a wide range of believers who call themselves "Christian"? What are the various conceptions of "Jesus" according to the various sorts of Christian believer?
I expect some such believers are inclined to think of Jesus as a historical person, and to think of the relation between God and Christ as at least analogous to the relation between Brahman and Atman. I expect many of these believers would agree, further, that each of us, each sentient being, is an Offspring of God, though some individuals more than others "realize" or "awaken" to the harmony of all things, traditionally exemplified and idealized in legends of prophets and sages, like Jesus.
I might count myself sympathetic to that sort of theological discourse, without supposing the picture must conflict with principles of atheism or agnosticism.
It all depends on how we unpack the terms we've bundled together so far in this conversation.
No, not a historical discussion. I took it that intended the question in the context of the traditional (Aristotelian, Scholastic, Spinozistic) understanding of 'necessary being' is all. If I was mistaken about this then @CurlyHairedCobbler will hopefully correct me.
My understanding is that the idea of necessary being as variously understood by Aristotle, the Scholastics and Spinoza is that a necessary being necessarily exists. This is basically a form of ontological argument. The idea is also inherent in different ways in Aquinas' "five ways" as well.
In any case my original input was simply to point out that:
IF God is a necessary being, and
IF to be a necessary being is to necessarily be, and
IF being a necessary being means that everything about that being is necessary and
IF God is a triune being and
IF Jesus is the Son of God meaning that he is one arm of that trinity,
THEN all this is necessary because God is a necessary being and everything about his being is necessarily as it is.
It is really simply tautologous, but as I have laid it out it is not purporting to be an argument that shows that God actually exists or is a triune being and so on. The point simply is that IF these are true THEN they arenecessarily true, under that conception of necessary being.
For Spinoza (whose thought I am most familiar with) at least the logic of necessity is contrasted with the logic of contingency and can be worked out from scratch rationally by means of "intellectual intuition". It has little or nothing to do with "identification" as erroneously asserts (but as usual does not explain).
Spinoza probably would have rejected the idea that God could be a triune being or that a human could be God, in any case, but although the idea does seem incoherent I don't think the logic of necessary being as Spinoza presents it necessarily rules that out, because for Spinoza God is also nature, and because he understood God through the lens of an absolute determinism, nature and the fact of existence of every being that ever existed is also in that deterministic sense necessary while also being contingent (in the conceptually different sense that the existence of finite beings is dependent on other finite beings and ultimately on infinite being (God). In other words for Spinoza if anything is true then it is necessarily true, even if contingent.
I think I see where the confusion lies. The idea of necessary being, the fact that there is an idea of necessary being, and the logic that idea entails in no way guarantees that a necessary being actually exists. There may be no necessary being other than being itself (if it is indeed necessary that there be something rather than nothing).
It's probably my fault and I should have put an extra clause right at the beginning:
IF there is a necessary being. The whole point is that IF there is a necessary being then the attributes of that being must also be necessary.
That's not an objection; if it weren't true, we could neither communicate nor collaborate. People play blindfold chess!
The definition of 'object' is:
So the use of the word 'object' for number is arguably like the second of these cases - but again, I'm suggesting, is itself a metaphorical deployment of the primary term 'object'.
Quoting Kornelius
I'm pointing out that here the word 'object' is used in a metaphorical way, and saying that this has overlooked implications.
The word 'objectivity' only entered the discourse in the early modern period - the online thesaurus says first written in 1610. Nowadays, the description of the arbitration of what is true as being 'objective' is so much part of normal discourse, that it seems absurd to challenge it - as you are saying! I'm saying that logical and arithmetical truths are not reliant on objective validation, that they're true a priori - something which still has a connection to the thread, even if tenuous!
Quoting tim wood
:up: Great book. And that quotation you provide is directly on point.
What has to do with identification is "Jesus is God."
There's something we're calling "Jesus" and something we're calling "God." If they turn out to be the same thing, so that the identity statement "Jesus is God" is correct, was it the case that necessarily they turned out to be the same thing--that is, would they have to be the same thing in all possible worlds?
It's the same question as whether "Hesperus is Phosphorus" is a necessary identity.
And the issue I brought up is that if we believe that Hesperus is metaphysically necessary, does that have any implication for whether it's necessary that Hesperus is Phosphorus? I say that it does not.
Of course, I don't believe there are any necessary identity statements period. And a fortiori, I don't really buy the notion of rigid designation beyond it being a way of saying that particular individuals can stipulate rigidity for a way that they're going to use a term, no matter what. I'd agree that we tend to use proper names in a rigid way--once we christen a baby "Richard Milhous Nixon" we tend to continue thinking of and calling that person "Richard Milhous Nixon" whether he becomes president or a janitor, but we wouldn't have to.
That someone else--Spinoza, Kripke, etc. might disagree with me is irrelevant, unless someone has specified that they only want to know what Spinoza or Kripke would say.
But this is my point: you are misusing "objective validation". Arithmetical propositions are necessarily true and deductively certain. They are objectively validated since they are true in every possible world. That is, one cannot reject the proposition and still claim to be thinking rationally.
Or we could put it this way: mathematical propositions are deductively proven, therefore objectively validated.
That is not a suitable definition for 'object' in philosophy at all. An object is whatever can be the semantic reference of a term. This includes abstract objects like sets, for example. Indeed, anything that could occur flanked to an identity sign in mathematics is an object, since only an object can be assigned to a term that flanks an identity sign.
This pretty much sums up the appropriate response to the OP as well. The entire claim is a conditional claim of this sort, which is why it is not controversial.
If God exists, then he necessarily exists. If Jesus is God, then Jesus is necessarily God. If Jesus is not God, then Jesus is necessarily not God.
That's it really.
Jesus Christ, in my opinion is the personality of God. I believe God felt the need to have a personality so he subdivided his multi dimensional attributes into himself and human form that actually had a personality.
In which case, I would agree with you. As I've said, we refer to mathematical judgement to determine what is an objective claim.
Quoting Kornelius
And I'm saying that this usage amounts to a dead metaphor, that it's a consequence of the absorption of an empiricist or naturalistic point of view which then has un-acknowledged semantic and even metaphysical consequences.
Why empiricist or naturalist? They would at least want to deny that there are abstract objects. One route to do this is to say that mathematical language that uses referential terms is a mere convenience or misleading, that the genuine semantics for such a language doesn't involve reference to numbers at all. They would, of course, have to construct such a language, or argue that terms can refer without taking seriously the objects to which they are referring.
I tend to see the view that objects are the reference of terms as a straightforward Platonist one (at least when it comes to abstract objects and properties/universals).
1. Jesus is God
and also
2. Jesus is NOT god
If you accept 1 then ''Jesus is god'' is necessarily true
BUT
If you accept 2 then ''Jesus is god'' is necessarily false.
God is a 10 dimensional entity. The holy spirit moves up and down all 10 dimensions. Jesus Christ is in the 3rd and 4th dimension and God the father is in the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th dimensions. :)
:smile:
I would argue the reason consciousness defies logic is because it precludes the law of excluded middle. The reason is, we humans can do two things at one time. One example is driving a car while totally thinking about something else. Or reciting something and thinking about something else that is completely different.
I believe Atheist Daniel Dennett wrote a book on Consciousness but unfortunately could not logically explain this phenomena about the mind (as well as other things).