Is God the only thing that exists a se?

CHRISTIAN THEISTIC ACCOUNTS OF ABSTRACTA: ARGUMENTS FROM NECESSITY OR ARGUMENTS OF DOGMA?

A certain orthodoxy (or dual dogmas) reigns among some Christian theists who take a realist[1] approach towards truth and are committed to the authority of the Bible. This orthodoxy asserts that God is the author of all truth and it has been taken to mean either one of the following: (1a) the truth-value and existence of necessary truths are volitionally dependent on God as his creation since God’s sovereignty is unconstrained by any logical limits over creation and aseity is a unique perfection of God or (1b) the existence of necessary truths are eternal features of God or are objects God creates since God is sovereign over all reality and aseity is a unique perfection of God. In light of (1a) and (1b), this paper addresses the following two questions: First, does theism that is foundationally based on the Bible entail or require either (1a) or (1b)? Secondly, are those committed to a realist conception of truth (whether theists or not) required to adopt (1a) or (1b) if they are to be realist? The answer I provide to both questions is no. To accomplish my task, part one of the paper focuses on (1a). Here I outline the specific nature of (1a), along with a critical analysis of the reasons offered in its defense. I argue that (1a) leads to nihilism and to forms of postmodernism that are incompatible with a biblical worldview and to realism which it entails. Part two of the paper focuses on (1b). Here I outline the specific nature of (1b), along with a critical analysis of the reasons offered in its defense. I argue that while (1b) is an improvement over (1a), it too is encumbered by problems of its own, e.g., being incoherent, having to appeal to ad hoc adjustments and being redundant. If anything counts in (1b)’s favor, it is its consistency with the traditional view of aseity and sovereignty as prescribed by classical theists of the Christian sort. Nevertheless, this favor falls short of being a categorical requirement for biblical theism or for realism simpliciter. Finally, I offer the conjunction of full blown Platonism and theism to account for truth that is consistent realism. Accordingly, while necessary truths would not have an ontological dependence on God for their existence, they would have a causal-epistemic dependence on God in so far as he makes them knowable to overcome their causal inertness.

What is the Orthodoxy?
A perennial orthodoxy concerning the relationship between God and necessary truths reigns among many proponents of Christian theism.[2] Stated broadly, the orthodoxy affirms that necessary truths and other associated abstracta are essentially grounded in God. The nature of this “groundedness” can be stated as either one of the following two theses:

(1a): truths and their associated truth-values are volitionally created and determined by God, respectively.

or

(1b): truths are necessarily and eternally dependent on God either as God’s thoughts or creation.

We can ask the all important questions: Does biblical theism entail or require either (1a) or (b)? Are those committed to a realist conception of truth (whether theists or not) required to adopt (1a) or (1b) if they are to be realists? In short I answer, no.
Let us begin with the first of these two questions. If this orthodoxy is required of a Christian theist who accepts the authority of the Bible, it should have biblical support or, minimal, philosophical support that grounds it as a necessary feature of the Christian worldview. Let’s take each thesis in turn. What passages in Scripture can be given to support (1a)? John 1:3a is a possible candidate:

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has
been made. (NASV)

1 Corinthians 8:6 is another possible candidate:

yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; (NASV)

And a third candidate is Colossians 1:16 as an example:

For in him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible….(NASV)

The supporter of (1a) holds that in these verses, the phrase ta panta (all things) should be taken in an absolute sense so as to include everything as a created thing ex nihilo, except God. From this reading of the biblical text, the obvious candidates of “created things” are concrete particulars. The not so obvious candidates of “created things” are nonphysical and invisible things like mathematical, geometrical and logical truths and other abstracta. So, on this reading, numbers, “the sum of the angles of any triangle equals 180,°” “the diagonals of a rhombus are perpendicular” and copious geometric figures are created things. Surely this interpretation of the biblical text concerning God’s creation is theologically consistent with such orthodox affirmations as the Nicean Creed’s declaration that “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.” However, do we have reasons to think that this interpretation of the Scriptures has strong or correct hermeneutical support for it over say other competing interpretations? For starters, we can ask, what counts as “correct” and are there other interpretations? An initial reply to the former question is that correctness can be determined in some cases where the biblical passages in question allow for one interpretation without qualification, e.g., passages that affirm God’s goodness should be interpreted as affirming God’s goodness, for “goodness” is not equivocal. On this note, the cited passages for (1a) concerning “all things” do not meet this requirement because they can be interpreted equivocally. The set of “all things” according to passages like Colossians 1:16 refers to created things. However, there is nothing in the cited passages per se that requires truth to be included among things created.[3] It is an analytic formality to point out that if there are some uncreated things, they could not be included under the ta panta in these passages. So unless there are passages that denote abstracta and also connote them as created things, no case can be made that a position that rejects (1a) is necessarily incompatible with Scripture.
This brings us to the second question: Are there other interpretations of the cited texts? The answer I put forward is a qualified, yes. My answer is qualified since I do not think Scripture affirms or denies abstracta as described by (1a). Nevertheless, I hold that contrary to (1a) there are some uncreated things that do not fall under the ta panta referenced in the cited texts. Perhaps the use of a reductio ad absurdum would be of some help here without leading to hermeneutic quandaries. Let’s first consider the view that references to ta panta in passages like Colossians 1:16 is an exhaustive account of creation ex nihilo in a temporal sense, then there was a time when triangles, rhombuses and numbers did not exist and consequently there was a time when necessary truths associated with such objects were neither true nor false.
For those who take abstracta to be included among ta panta but take their creation to be a-temporal from eternity, a problem still emerges. There are serious problems with talk of creation as both ex nihilo and eternal. First, a natural reading of the biblical text presents us with an image of temporal creation ex nihilo (Gen. 1:1; John 1:1-3). Talk of a-temporal causation is foreign to the Bible. Secondly, talk of a-temporal causation is not consistent with the orthodox Christian view that God freely creates ex nihilo.[4]
Ultimately, it is an open question whether the writers of Scripture were concerned with quandaries that are essentially couched in philosophy. During the writing of the Bible, and particularly during the writing of the New Testament, very few if any Christian readers would have been concerned with the metaphysics of abstracta, let alone been concerned with the ramifications of abstracta. So should (1a) be jettison outright or are there philosophical reasons, independent of any hermeneutical considerations from Scripture that warrants (1a)?

The Origins of the Orthodoxy on the Philosophical Front: The Beginning of a Tradition
Historically speaking, perhaps the only philosophical account of (1a) comes from the noted rationalist Rene Descartes. Let us consider Descartes’ remarks on abstracta in his replies to Mersenne:

The mathematical truths which you call eternal have been laid down by God and depend on him entirely no less than the rest of his creatures. Indeed to say that these truths are independent of God is to talk of him as if he were Jupiter or Saturn and to subject him to the Styx and the Fates. Please do not hesitate to assert and proclaim everywhere that it is God who has laid down these laws in nature just as a king lays down laws in his kingdom.[5]

Elsewhere Descartes writes that:

It is not for having seen that it was better that the world be created in time rather than from eternity, that He willed to create it in time; and He did not will that the three angles of a triangle equal two right angles because He knew that it could not be otherwise, etc. On the contrary, it is because He willed to create the world in time that its having been created in time is better than if it had been created from eternity; and it is because He willed that the three angles of a triangle equal two right angles that it is now true that this is so and that it cannot be otherwise; and similarly for everything else.[6]

And to show that he is not dismissing the notion of necessity completely, Descartes says in a letter to Antoine Arnauld:

I would not even dare to say that God cannot arrange that a mountain should exist without a valley, or that one and two should not make three; but I only say that He has given me a mind of such a nature that I cannot conceive a mountain without a valley or a sum of one and two which would not be three….[7]

Essentially for Descartes, the truth-value of the propositions of logic, mathematics and geometry is necessary only from a finite conceiver’s perspective but not from the perspective of the propositions themselves. Necessity as Descartes knew it then is a feature of the divinely structured human mind and not a feature of propositions and abstracta in general. Necessity de dicto then is an extrinsic property and ultimately a divine volitional affair. As Descartes states:

For it is certain that he is the author of the essence of created things no less than of
their existence; and this essence is nothing other than the eternal truths. I do
not conceive them as emanating from God like rays from the sun; but I know
that God is the author of everything and that these truths are something
and consequently that he is their author.[8]

This view is generally called universal possibilism.[9]
So from a philosophical perspective, does biblical theism entail or require (1a)? One way to answer this question is to ask the question: What is at stake if biblical theism endorses (1a)? Christian theists are committed to the belief that what they believe about God, creation and God’s involvement in creation are genuinely true and not true simply because God makes us believe such things are true, e.g., that God exists, that God is triune, that God is transcendent and thus independent of creation and that Jesus Christ is the savior of humanity. However, if Descartes is right about God’s providence over “truth” and about humanity’s inability to conceive reality independently of how God construed our minds, then (1a) bears fruit for a solipsist but not for one committed to realism or a mind-independent reality.[10] By grounding abstracta in God via a creation of God’s eternal will, truth itself lacks any jurisdiction beyond God’s will. Given the Christian theist’s commitment to monotheism, truth then is, in the sprit of Richard Rorty, whatever God allows himself to get away with. We have then a theistic albeit divine kind of postmodernism. The evidence for this unfortunate association with postmodernism also comes readily from the words of Richard Rorty:

We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that truth is out there. To say that the world is out there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include human mental states. To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that there where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that human languages are human creations.[11]

Sounds gloomy, but this is exactly what Descartes and other proponents of (1a) affirm when they assert that truth is actually a narrative God construes.[12]
In other words, the truths within God’s narrative are true only in so far as God willed that they be conceived as “true” by the human mind. This also amounts to saying, in the spirit of Rorty, that truth is not out there in the world, but in our minds.
As for the question of whether those committed to a realist conception of truth (whether theist or not) are required to adopt (1a), the anti-realist parallel to postmodernism should be sufficient to answer this question in the negative. So in light of the quandaries of (1a), why would anyone affirm that truths are creatable things? And more importantly, why would they affirm that the truth-value of necessary truths is a matter for God to determine? The obvious philosophical and theological reason for those who hold (1a) is that the existence and truth-value of necessary truths are affairs that cannot obtain independent of God, for if they do, God would not be sovereign and something like Platonism would be true. Platonism in its basic form holds, among other things, that abstracta exist a se and aseity equally applies to their truth-value.
To maintain God’s aseity and sovereignty, some theists have taken a middle position on this issue. They assert that the truth-value of necessary truths is independent of God, i.e., necessary truths cannot not be true and thus they are beyond God’s will to make false (contra Descartes). As to the existence of necessary truths, some of them hold a view that I hinted at earlier: a modified Platonist view that holds necessary truths are eternally created by God. Others take another middle position and argue that necessary truths are eternal but uncreated features of God noetic structure. This view is called Conceptualism. In all such cases, all middle of the road theists, contra full blown Platonism, affirm that the existence of abstracta, whether they are internal or external to God’s being, depend on God.
They both accept (1b). Necessary truths on these views exist eternally, immutable and in all possible worlds. They are not a threat to God’s sovereignty and aseity since their existence “depends” on God. Conceptualism is the traditional position taken by Christian theists and was the position of Augustine and Aquinas. Augustine writes:

But where are we to think these… [ideas, i.e., abstracta]… exist, if not in the mind of the creator? For he did not look outside himself, to anything placed [there], in order to set up what he set up. To think that is sacrilege. But if these… [ideas]…of all things to be created and [already] created are contained in the divine mind, and [if] there cannot be anything in the divine mind that is not eternal and unchangeable, and [if] Plato calls these principal reasons of things “Ideas”, [then] not only are there Ideas but they are true, because they are eternal and [always] stay the same way, and [are] unchangeable.[13]

Elsewhere Augustine writes:

The ideas are certain archetypal forms or stable and immutable essences of things, which have not themselves been formed but, existing eternally and without change, are contained in the divine intelligence.[14]

While essentially agreeing with Augustine, Aquinas held that God and his thoughts are identical to each other by way of divine simplicity. In the Summa Theologica, Aquinas writes:

…things are called true from the truth of the intellect. Hence, if no intellect were eternal, no truth would be eternal. Now because only the divine intellect is eternal, in it alone truth has eternity. Nor does it follow from this that anything else but God is eternal; since the truth of the divine intellect is God Himself, as shown already.
Reply to Objection 1: The nature of a circle, and the fact that two and three make five, have eternity in the mind of God.[15]

This element of contingency for all truths results from Aquinas’s view that truths are necessarily mind dependent. Evidence that Aquinas adopts this antirealist conception of truth is evidenced in the De Veritate:

Even if there were no human intellects, there could be truths because of their relation to the divine intellect. But if, per impossible, there were no intellects at all, but things continued to exist, then there would be no such reality as truth.[16]

It is clear from these passages from Augustine and Aquinas that necessary truths depend on God’s cognitive activity, existing either as God’s thoughts. For both Augustine and Aquinas, they deviate from Platonism in that creation, unlike what we see in Plato’s Timaeus, reflects or resembles God’s thoughts rather than abstract objects. So apples are not created with Appleness as a model idea; God’s own thought, which is a feature of his mind, is the exemplar for created particular apples. To speak of necessary truths on their view is simply to speak of thoughts that God necessarily thinks. In a similar fashion to how objects are sustained in George Berkeley’s ontology (esse est percipi) by God’s perception, truths are similarly sustained by God’s thoughts. Thus for Augustine and Aquinas, necessary truths exist a se only in so far as they are identified as features of God’s mind.
In recent times theists like Alvin Plantinga, Thomas Morris and William Craig have attempted to defend (1b). To do so, Plantinga and Craig adopt conceptualism while Morris adopts modified Platonism or what he calls “theistic activism.” Let us consider conceptualism first via Plantinga. Plantinga writes:

[A] proposition exists because God thinks or conceives of it. For propositions, as I see it, are best thought of as the thoughts of God.…God is a necessary being who has essentially the property of thinking just the thoughts he does think; these thoughts, then, are conceived or thought by God in every possible world and hence exist necessarily.[17]

Plantinga makes clear what most philosophers would affirm, viz., that there is a distinction between the truth-value of a proposition and the existence of a proposition. That is, God’s thinking of or conceiving of a proposition makes a proposition exist but this activity does not determine the proposition’s truth-value. Plantinga writes:

…God’s believing p is [not] prior, in some important sense, to p’s being true. God’s believing p is not, in general, an explanation of p’s being true, or what makes p true, or the reason for p’s being true . . . . On the other hand it is the case, I think,
that a proposition exists because God thinks or conceives it.[18]

So a proposition p could not be true if it did not exist (which is trivially true). And p exists only because God thinks it. Thus “[truth] is not the very same property as being believed by God, even though the former is necessarily coextensive with the latter.”[19] And regarding necessary truths, Plantinga holds that God necessarily thinks them and thus they necessarily exist.
William Craig also argues for conceptualism in Creation Out Of Nothing. In the tradition of Augustine Craig also holds that numbers, sets, properties, and so forth are thoughts in the mind of God.[20] God’s thoughts are not of abstracta least God’s thoughts be particulars. Craig notes, “if redness is a [particular] thought in God’s mind, what does it mean to say that a fire truck, for example, stands in the exemplifies relation to that particular thought?”[i][21] God’s thoughts consist of “pure concepts” which are not particulars, but are “the sort of things that are the intentional objects of thought.”[22] Like Augustine, Craig holds that God’s thoughts function as abstracta in so far as they are exemplars for creation and objects of knowledge. The property being red, for example, exists as a thought in God’s mind and God is able to cause this thought to be exemplified in objects such as red fire trucks. Being red then is explanatory prior to the existence of red objects. Moreover, according to Craig’s conceptualism, universals are also conceptual abstractions from particulars (at least conceptual abstractions from particulars for humans). Being red then as a conceptual abstraction is posterior to red objects from the perspective of humans knowers.
From the works of Plantinga and Craig we have an account of conceptualism which has not changed over its original formulation by Augustine and Aquinas. For conceptualism in general, abstracta qua God’s thoughts exist necessarily; they bear a quasi substance-property dependency relationship to God. Just as beliefs and other mental properties in general cannot exist independently of some mind,[23] neither can abstracta and necessary truths in particular exist without being features of God’s mind. With this much said to explain conceptualism, we have reasons to think conceptualism is muddled with unanswered questions and de facto objections.
First, it is a puzzling claim for conceptualists to hold that ultimately necessary propositions are just God’s thoughts. Conceptualists do not make it at all clear why the existence of necessary truths simpliciter qua necessarily existing things have to be thoughts in God’s mind. While it is quite clear why beliefs, for example, cannot exist without a mind, it is not at all clear what the conceptualist argument is for the assertion that propositions ultimately have a similar ontological life (in God’s mind). To be sure, propositions and beliefs are similar but distinct entities. By definition, beliefs are properties of a mind; they are first-person oriented. Beliefs are attitudes about propositions. They are essentially intentional. If concrete particulars exemplify God’s thoughts, they do so without also exemplifying their intentional content. This raises a question for the conceptualists as to how they can account for exemplification without intentionality. Moreover, propositions do not per se have a dependency relationship to a mind (surely the proposition “Earth is a sphere” exists and is true even if no one thought about it). Of course conceptualists share a different intuition. Within the context of created beings, they affirm a distinction between propositions and beliefs, such that the former can exist without human minds but not the latter. However, from their perspective, this distinction does not exist when the context is God’s mind. As Plantinga notes, “propositions, as I see it, are best thought of [as] the thoughts of God.”[24]
While Plantinga offers no argument to justify this asymmetry between beliefs and propositions in God’s mind, he does note, however, the obvious postmodern, antirealist difficulties for asserting that propositions just are human thoughts (the problem of varying truth claims). However, he does not state why these difficulties evaporate when propositions just are God’s thoughts. If the difficulty of grounding truth in our thoughts is due to our cognitive imperfections and copious perspectives on truth, then the corrective of grounding truth in God must at least be due to God’s cognitive perfection. But this is to confuse grounding truth with knowing truth, and surely some truths (e.g., I am appeared to greenly) do not require a “God’s eye” perspective on matters. Short of an argument that shows why truths and God have this necessary property-substance relation, the claim that necessary truths cannot exist apart from being God’s thoughts is a claim that should be shuffled to the category of theistic dogma.[25]
The second problem is a bit more serious for conceptualists and one they do not directly address. Here the questions for conceptualists are: (1) If the existence of necessary truths depends on God is it also the case that the truth-value of necessary truths depends on God or (2) If the truth-value of necessary truths does not depend on God is it also the case that the existence of necessary truths does not depend on God? While Plantinga says that “God is a necessary being who has essentially the property of thinking just the thoughts he does think” this claim should not be taken as an attempt to answer the joint questions I posed. For while God contemplates necessarily true propositions as true and necessarily false propositions as false in all possible worlds, this state of affairs does not tell us why God has the attitudes he has toward them in all possible worlds. It is trivially true that if God contemplates a necessary truth, he cannot contemplate it as false in any possible world. This is due not to God’s contemplation of the truth in every world but to the truth-value of the proposition.
It may appear that the question I am posing is confused about the nature of necessary truths. For, it may be argued, whatever we say about the basis of the truth-value of necessary truths, this is a separate matter from the existence of necessary truths. Accordingly, conceptualists do not need to ground the truth-value of necessary truths in God since their truth-value is a matter of the modal relationships among the various abstracta that they correspond to, i.e., concepts. Thus it should be understood that God, nor anything else, can determine their truth-values. So the reason why the proposition “A triangle has 3 sides” is necessarily true is simply because of the essence of a triangle and its relationship to the essence of threeness. And for conceptualists to make a case for conceptualism, all they have to do is show that necessary truths, independent of their truth-values, are grounded in God’s mind as his thoughts. But a closer look at the relationship between the truth-value of a necessary truth and the existence of a necessary truth shows otherwise. To reiterate the obvious, for any truth that is necessarily true, its falsehood cannot be conceived by God or any other mind in any possible world. Conversely, we can say that a necessary truth is a proposition that is true in every possible world. The basis for this trans-world property of necessary truths is the collective essential natures of the object(s) they describe. If necessary truths cannot be conceived as false in any possible world they equally cannot fail to exist in any possible world. Contrary to conceptualism, to require God to sustain their existence is to overstate the nature of what necessary truths are. Conceptualists hold that God necessarily thinks these truths in every possible world. What conceptualists fail to see is that the essence of abstracta qua truth-makers of necessary truths (viz., what the necessary truths describe), is what determines the truth-value of necessary truths in every possible world. Now since God cannot determine the essence of a triangle and thus any truths about a triangle, it follows that he is also not responsible for the existence of the truths about triangles. The truth-value of necessary truths and the essences of the objects they describe are necessarily related causal-closure, autonomous way.
In recent years, some theists have attempted to justify (1b) by shifting from conceptualism to a deified or modified Platonism. Work done by Thomas V. Morris is one the most well known. He agrees with Aquinas and Plantinga that “God is not in control of abstract objects or necessary truths, in the sense that he cannot annihilate or alter them intrinsically …[and] these things depend on God for their existence….”[26] However, abstracta, on Morris’ account, are platonic objects that necessarily exist, but are eternally created by God.
There are problems with Morris’ defense of (1b) as well. Essentially the argument against modified Platonism holds that if true propositions and all abstracta depend on God, in the way that (1b) affirms, then God is also responsible for his own nature and existence, which is incoherent. Consider the following two propositions:

(a) God exists
(b) God is omnipotent.

For theists, both propositions are considered true. In fact, many theists would affirm that part of the essence of these propositions is being true. But to cause these propositions to exist is to cause their essence to be exemplified.[27] So if God causes all propositions to exist, such as (a) and (b), then he also causes them to exemplify being true. This amounts to saying that what follows from (a) and (b) is the existence of an omnipotent God. Thus God existence and nature are explanatorily posterior to his causing (a) and (b) to exist. So God would be responsible for causing his own existence.
To put it another way, consider the property being omnipotent. Like all properties, modified Platonism holds that God causes being omnipotent to exist and it holds that properties exist prior to their exemplifications. So to cause some object to exist is to cause its prior existing essential properties to be exemplified. God exists as a being that exemplifies the property being omnipotent. However, for modified Platonists, the existence of the property being omnipotent must exist explanatorily prior to it exemplification and, most importantly, be caused by God. But then modified Platonism is left with a dilemma. Either God creates abstracta or he does not. If God were to create abstracta, as they argue, then God cannot logically be said to be omnipotent until he causes the exemplification of the property being omnipotent. Moreover, to create the property of being omnipotent God would have to be omnipotent to do so. But this amounts to saying that there are some abstracta that God does not create and the consequence of this acknowledgement is that God’s exemplifying omnipotence is prior to his creation of the property being omnipotent, which is the reverse of what Platonism allows. Thus God’s properties exist before they are exemplified, given the modified Platonist’s thesis. But this is incoherent.
One noted reply to these objections to modified Platonism comes from J. P.:

Perhaps the modified Platonist might maintain that all the properties that God exemplifies as part of his nature – for example, being loving, being powerful, and so on – do not exist in a “realm” outside of God, as do other properties. Rather, as a brute fact, God, along with his nature, simply exists a se. Other properties, such as being red, are sustained by God, either by his intellect, will or in some other way. Thus only these properties that are not constituents of God are timelessly created by God.[28]

Moreland claims that this distinction is not ad hoc since modified Platonists have “good, independent grounds for believing in God’s existence and aseity and in the existence of abstract objects construed along Platonic lines.”[29] Moreland, as a modified Platonist, does not state what these independent reasons are. Whether or not he is right, Moreland allows some abstracta (those properties that are features of God’s nature) to have no causal explanation but simply to exist a se. This is not a typical move for modified Platonists. To be sure, their position is modified simply because they take only God to exist a se. To recall, abstracta on their view, while eternal, are created things. Without collapsing into some form of simplicity where all abstracta exist a se in God or expanding into full blown Platonism where all abstracta exist a se outside of God, Moreland needs to explain the “brute factness” for just these properties. An argument that appeals to coherence to the traditions of classical theism won’t do.
A second problem with modified Platonism concerns its alleged incompatibility with God’s sovereignty. For according to the classical theist’s conception of God under (1a) and (1b), God’s will is unconstrained by anything except his own nature. This anxiety about God’s sovereignty is what led Descartes to the apparently absurd view of universal possibilism. Nevertheless, modified Platonists hold that God timelessly created abstracta. However, for modified Platonists, God has to put up with their truth-value. This would not be a problem for God’s sovereignty if all abstracta were part of God’s nature, but they are not for the modified Platonist. Abstracta, for them, exist eternally dependent on God but eternally external to God’s being. Along the lines of the objection posed against conceptualists, we are left wondering why modified Platonists maintain (1b) and are not full blown Platonists if they allow for God’s sovereignty to be constrained by the truth-value of things external to God’s being.
If the views of Descartes, Augustine, Aquinas, Morris, Plantinga and Craig in this paper reflect the main attempts to justify (1a) and (1b), I have argued that they have not succeeded. To be sure most contemporary Christian theists of the highest ranks are willing to concede the failings of (1a), but they are not willing to do the same for (1b) on the big scale. That is, conceptualists would argue that modified Platonism is problematic but this fact would not entail ~(1b) and modified Platonists would argue that conceptualism is problematic but this fact would not entail ~(1b). For both sides, ~(1b) is not an option.[30] Is this because ~(1b) is logically incoherent? If it is, what is the argument for it? Nominalism and Platonism are logical possibilities. As to a defense of either of these two views, since I am concerned with defending a realist view of truth, I will concern myself with only with Platonism. So what is so wrong with Platonism and more specifically what is so wrong with Platonism for Christian theism? Plantinga’s answer is that “Platonism properly so-called has been a rare bird in our philosophical tradition.”[31] Unfortunately consensus and unpopularity do not constitute an argument against Platonism. While Plantinga does not go on the attack against Platonism with objections in hand, such objections exist.

Objections to Platonism, the Bible and the doctrine of sovereignty
The question throughout this paper has been whether necessary truths (and any abstracta) depend on God either in the context of (1a) or (1b). As I have tried to show, contra (1a) and (1b), no argument has been presented to prove that truth necessarily is couched in either way. So against much Christian tradition, I have argued it is problematic to hold that abstracta have a de re dependence on God. That is, a Christian theist, or anyone for that matter, could take necessary truths as platonic.
This move to Platonism does not come without criticism. One charge against this move is that Platonism is allegedly incompatible with God’s sovereignty. In his defense of (1b) in Does God have a Nature Plantinga resounds Descartes’ concern about sovereignty when he writes:

According to Augustine, God created everything distinct from him; did he then create these things [necessary truths]? Presumably not; they have no beginning. Are they dependent on him? But how could a thing whose non-existence is impossible--the number 7, let's say, or the property of being a horse--depend upon anything for its existence? Does God (so to speak) just find them constituted the way they are? Must he simply put up with their being thus constituted? Are these things, their existence and their character, outside his control?[32]

Plantinga’s concerns are shared by most theists. But in what sense is God supposed to be sovereign? Plantinga offers the following account of sovereignty:
(a) he has created everything distinct from himself, (b) there is nothing upon which he depends for his existence and character, (c) everything distinct from him depends upon him, and (d) everything is within his control.[33]
(a) speaks of reality outside of God as created. (b) speaks of God’s essence and being as a se. (c) speaks of reality outside of God as ab alio. Thus (c) entails the counter-factual “If God did not exist no necessary existing thing would exist. (d) speaks of there being no states of affairs outside of God’s volition. Before engaging this philosophical account of sovereignty, we do well to affirm what the Bible says on this issue. After all, Christian theism is ultimately concerned with affirming what the Bible affirms about God. So does the Bible affirm (a)-(d)?
When we peruse the Bible it affirms God’s sovereignty but not per se in the grand manner presented in (a) through (d). We find that only (b) is unequivocally affirmed. When the focus of the Bible is humanity, (c) is affirmed as we see in Acts 17:28 when Luke speaks of God preserving “our being.” When the focus is humanity, (d) is also affirmed as in Romans 8:28 where Paul speaks of God’s sovereignty over the good of “those who are called according to His purpose.” There are no texts that unequivocally provide an exhaustive description of all reality and thus no texts that deny the aseity of other things (contra (b)). The closest the Bible comes to affirming (d) is Ephesians 1:11. Here Paul speaks of God working “all things (ta panta) after the counsel of His will.” However, even here the “all things” clearly is in reference to factors concerning the salvation of the elect (ref. Eph. 1:4) and not to the totality of all existence outside of God Himself. So a rejection of (1b) does not entail a rejection of biblical theism in so far as God’s sovereign is an issue.
Another charge against Platonism is its allege incompatible with creation ex nihilo. The incompatibility arises when aseity is understood in the tradition of Classical Theism described in this paper, i.e., to be a sui genris perfection of God.[34] However, the doctrine of aseity understood from a scriptural perspective is not per se incompatible with creation ex nihilo. In light of Scripture that affirms God’s eternality and uncreatedness (Exodus 3:14; Psalms 90:2; John 5:26; Acts 17:25l), there is reason to believe that God exists a se, but we have no proof texts that require us to believe only God exists a se. Moreover, as pointed out earlier, it is not at all clear that passages that reference God’s creation of “all things” or of the “heavens and the earth” have in mind necessary truths and abstracta in general: (e.g., Genesis 1:1; John 1:3a; Colossians 1:16; and 1 Corinthians 8:6).[35] Abstracta can be classified as uncreated things, as full blown Platonists do, and thus would not necessarily fall under “all things” of God’s creation. Thus there is nothing in Scripture per se that prevents us from taking necessary truths as uncreated things. Even conceptualists and modified Platonists like Moreland hold that some abstracta, in so far as God’s properties are concerned, like being omnipotent or being eternal, are not created properties.
But apart from those in the theological arena, are there objections to Platonism from those without a theological axe to grind? Well, while there is nothing self-contradictory about Platonism, there is one[36] particular epistemic defeater to Platonism that deserves attention independent of any concerns about God. According to the consensus among many contemporary philosophers, abstracta are inert. Accordingly, since abstracta are non-spatial and are not intentional by nature,[37] they can never by themselves enter into causal relations with anything, particularly to produce knowledge in us. Therefore, according to the objection, we can never have knowledge of necessary truths if they exist independently of God.[38] So while they could exist a se, they could not be known. Of course this objection fails to take into account that while abstracta are inert and cannot be known, their inertness is not per se an argument against them being true. If anything this objection shows, necessary truths would not be accessible to us as knowers. The objection counts against Platonism only if the following two conditions obtain: we have knowledge of necessary truths and there isn’t a means of accessing knowledge of necessary truths other than by considering them the thoughts of God. However, I deny the second condition. I suggest that while abstracta are by nature inert, an omnipotent God by some primitive act could cause abstracta, existing a se, to produce knowledge in us. In a sense then, theism is required for coming to know truths of this kind, though not required for their being truths of this kind. Hebrews 1:3 reads:

The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. (NIV)

Here the writer of Hebrews emphatically states that Christ “sustains all things” (or fevrwn te ta pavnta). The word fevrwn, in so far as “all things” is concerned, connotes the sense of “carrying it [viz., all things] along, of bearing it toward a goal.”[39] Thus the use of fevrwn speaks of Christ’s sustaining role as instrumental in a thing’s function or teleology, not in its existence. It is doubtful that the writer of Hebrews was preoccupied with abstracta by his reference to all things. Nevertheless, it is no stretch of the imagination to suggest that Christ’s role in bearing abstracta toward their goal has everything to do with making them known to the mind. Thus the theist who is concerned with grounding truth need not fear Platonism. His theism and epistemology can join hands but need not become the same hand.


Bernard Walker




[1] The term “realist” as I am using the term here refers to non-conventional notions of truth, where truth is not equivalent to what is stipulated by a community of human persons but is an account of how things really are independent of human conceivers.
[2] I am not attempting to undermine classical theism; my aim is directed at proponents of a tradition within Christian classical theism that adhere to the orthodoxy under discussion and are committed to the authority of the Bible.
[3] This is particularly the case when we consider Jesus’ claim that he is truth. Unless we are willing to give up the view that Jesus is eternal or is not truth in any sense of the word, truth cannot be created.
[4] I will return to the discussion of an eternal creation of abstracta when I address Thomas V. Morris’s view called absolute creation.
[5] Sixth Replies: CSM II, 293
[6] Sixth Replies: CSM II, 291-2.
[7] To Arnauld, 29 July 1648, K 236-237.
[8] May 27, 1630 to Mersenne CSMK 25
[9] One cannot help but notice the Kantian transcendentalism in Descartes.
[10] In fact, this glimpse into Descartes’ epistemic limitations is a bit surprising considering his cognitive aim in the Meditations that attempts to dismiss solipsism posed by the possibility of deception by an evil genius. In Meditation II, Descartes reasons that deception necessitates thinking (whether Descartes or just the deceiver himself). Thus he supposedly achieves his cognitive goal in Meditation II by arriving at indubitability via the cogito sum. However, this aim for an indubitability, that is not marred by solipsism, is a bit misplaced in the context of Descartes’ Replies and comments to Arnauld and Mersenne. As we saw in his correspondence with Arnauld and Mersenne, Descartes would have us believe the contrary, viz., that necessity de dicto and de re are not actual properties of things and propositions but are ways God structures our reality and consequently the way the human intellect comprehends things and propositions via God’s divine creative design. This disparity in Descartes’ thought is further noted in his defense of his ontological argument for the existence of God in Meditation V. There he writes: “From the fact that I cannot think of a mountain without a valley, it does not follow that a mountain with a valley exist anywhere, but simply that a mountain and a valley, whether they exist or not, are mutually inseparable. But from the fact that I cannot think of God except as existing, it follows that existence is inseparable from God, and hence He really exists. It is not that my thoughts make it so, or imposes any necessity on any thing; on the contrary, it is the necessity of the thing itself….”

[11] Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 4-5.
[12] To be sure, Descartes does not suggest, for example, that 2 +2=5 could be true relative to the noetic structure of beings different from humans. Yet his view of truth logically entails this possibility. Rorty and other postmodernists would enjoy Descartes’ company on this note.
[13] Augustine, On Eighty-Three Different Questions, q. 46, 2, in De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus, translated by P. V. Spade, 383.
[14] Augustine,De Ideis 2
[15] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part 1, Question 16, Article 7.
[16] Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate Q. 1, A.6 Respondeo.
[17] Alvin Plantinga, “How to Be an Anti-Realist,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 56 (1982), 70. In a less technical work, Norman Geisler and Ronald M. Brooks present a similar stance about God’s relationship to logic. They assert that “Logic comes from God….God is the author of all logic; logic flows from God.” See Come Let Us Reason: An Introduction To Logical Thinking (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1990), 17.

[18] Plantinga, 69-70.
[19] Ibid., 69.
[20] William Lane Craig and Paul Copan, Creation Out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker books, 2004).
[21] Ibid., 194.
[22] Ibid., 194.
[23] For those committed to some sort of physicalism or property dualism, the substance in this case would be the brain and the beliefs would be its properties.
[24] Plantinga, 70.
[25] While Plantinga does not go to battle against Platonism to rule it out as a viable competitor to conceptualism, theist William Lane Craig does. However, while Craig criticizes Platonism, the just of his attack centers around Platonism’s implausibility given the commitments he has to a traditional line running through classical Christian theism, viz., (1b). He holds that “The divine attribute of a se (from himself) is traditionally understood to be a unique perfection of God, the ens realissimum (ultimate reality). God alone exists self-sufficiently and independently of all things…” In short, theists like Craig affirm without argument that since God exists in the manner understood in the traditional sense stated, then it must be the case that God exists in the traditional sense stated. See William Lane Craig, Creation Out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration,173.
[26] Thomas Morris, “Absolute Creation,” in his Anselmian Explorations (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987). 171.
[27] The argument developed here is made by Matthew Davidson in “A Demonstration Against Theistic Activism,” Religious Studies, 35 (1999): 277-290.
[28] J. P. Moreland, in JP Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 505.
[29] Ibid., 505
[30] While Craig is a conceptualist and Moreland is a modified Platonist, they both agree that “abstract objects should be thought of as in some way grounded in God.” See J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, 507.
[31] Plantinga, “How to Be an Anti-Realist,” 68.
[32]Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 1980), 4-5.
[33] Ibid., 78,79.
[34] This is the way William Craig describes the problem with Platonism and creation ex nihilo. He writes, “the metaphysical pluralism entailed by Platonism’s denial of creatio ex nihilo robs God of his aseity. The divine attribute of existing a se (from himself) is traditionally understood to be a unique perfection of God, the ens realissimum (ultimate reality).” The problem with Craig’s objection to Platonism here is that it is incompatible only with the view of aseity adopted by tradition within Classical Theism. Craig says nothing about whether this traditional view is entailed by Scripture. See Craig’s Creation Out Of Nothing, 173.

[35] The writer of Hebrews does not make it clear in what sense Christ sustains all things in 1:3. However, the context of this passage suggests “all things” is the created order.
[36] Craig points out two arguments against Platonism. One of them Craig refers to as the uniqueness objection. According to the objection, only the structural properties of natural numbers (the relationships numbers have to each other in terms of being first, second, third, forth, etc.) satisfy the basic axioms of arithmetic. Craig says, “any series of abstract objects exhibiting that ordinal structure satisfies the basic axioms of arithmetic. There does not seem to be anything metaphysically special about any of these sequences of abstract objects that would set one of them apart as the unique series of natural numbers. But if Platonism is true, there is a unique sequence of abstract objects that is the natural numbers. Therefore, Platonism is false.” Unless Craig is able to extrapolate this objection to all abstrata, his objection, if valid, holds only for mathematical abstracta. See Craig’s Creation Out Of Nothing, 171.
[37] At least modified Platonist do not take abstracta to be intentional.
[38] This is also an objection Thomas Morris holds against Platonism. Initially he admits that there is a symmetrical relation between the de re necessity of God and abstracta, such that (1) If there were no God, there would be no abstract objects and (2) If there were no abstract objects, there would be no God are both true. Yet, for Morris, while there is a logical dependence relationship running both ways between the antecedents and consequents of both propositions, causal dependency obtains only in (1). Morris’ reason for this claim is that abstracta are inert. See Thomas Morris, Anselmian Explorations, 164-165. William Craig is another theist who throws his hat into this discussion. He argues that since we have knowledge of mathematical truths and abstracta are inert, then Platonism is false. See Craig’s Creation Out Of Nothing, 171.
[39] Leon Morris, “Hebrews” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1981), 14.