Rolling Stone Cover Story Calls Pope Francis 'Revolutionary' | Advocate.com
Comments? We'd love to hear from you.
Gimme Shelter Now in Theaters
Pro-life champion Kathy DiFiore has had a remarkable life filled with redemption and hope. A suburban wife and mother, she escaped an abusive marriage only to find herself homeless and on the street. She focused on saying the prayer of St. Francis and eventually was able to reclaim her life. DiFiore went on to found Several Sources Shelters, which provides a home and safety net for pregnant women, who are often desperate, alone and homeless, and worked hand-in-hand with Mother Teresa to change shelter laws in New Jersey. Her compelling life is the inspiration behind the gritty pro-life movie GIMME SHELTER, which comes out tomorrow.
The film has been endorsed by an impressive group of prominent Catholics, including His Excellency, Bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life; Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York; Kevin Ryan, president and CEO of Covenant House; and Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life.
“The remarkable narrative of GIMME SHELTER expresses a powerful reality and the heroic love of a mother for her unborn child,” said His Excellency, Bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula. “Exploring the hard questions regarding the meaning of life, family, love and suffering, our heroine, ‘Apple,’ fights against all odds and finds hope in the kindness of some key people, including a hospital chaplain who expresses the true nature of a priestly soul of service, guidance, and the deep Love of God for every single man, woman and child from the moment of conception. Out of rejection shines the courageous beauty of a mother’s love, and out of tragedy, shines hope!”
Forced to flee her abusive mother (Rosario Dawson), and turned away by her Wall Street father (Brendan Fraser), “Apple Bailey” (Vanessa Hudgens) finds herself on a desperate and isolated journey of survival. In the depths of despair, she meets a compassionate priest (James Earl Jones), who ultimately leads her to redemption and unprecedented support in a suburban shelter for homeless teenagers. With gained confidence, and the warmth of her new home, Apple breaks from her inhibiting past, embracing the future with clarity and hope.
Hudgens immersed herself in the character and delivers a transformative and stunning performance. To prepare for her role, she lived for weeks in the Several Sources pregnancy shelter, interacting with the young, homeless mothers who also appear in the film, completely altering her appearance unrecognizable.
Watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE42YdC70E8.
Download resources for churches and ministries: http://gimmeshelter.ministryresources.org.
The film has been endorsed by an impressive group of prominent Catholics, including His Excellency, Bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life; Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York; Kevin Ryan, president and CEO of Covenant House; and Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life.
“The remarkable narrative of GIMME SHELTER expresses a powerful reality and the heroic love of a mother for her unborn child,” said His Excellency, Bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula. “Exploring the hard questions regarding the meaning of life, family, love and suffering, our heroine, ‘Apple,’ fights against all odds and finds hope in the kindness of some key people, including a hospital chaplain who expresses the true nature of a priestly soul of service, guidance, and the deep Love of God for every single man, woman and child from the moment of conception. Out of rejection shines the courageous beauty of a mother’s love, and out of tragedy, shines hope!”
Forced to flee her abusive mother (Rosario Dawson), and turned away by her Wall Street father (Brendan Fraser), “Apple Bailey” (Vanessa Hudgens) finds herself on a desperate and isolated journey of survival. In the depths of despair, she meets a compassionate priest (James Earl Jones), who ultimately leads her to redemption and unprecedented support in a suburban shelter for homeless teenagers. With gained confidence, and the warmth of her new home, Apple breaks from her inhibiting past, embracing the future with clarity and hope.
Hudgens immersed herself in the character and delivers a transformative and stunning performance. To prepare for her role, she lived for weeks in the Several Sources pregnancy shelter, interacting with the young, homeless mothers who also appear in the film, completely altering her appearance unrecognizable.
Watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE42YdC70E8.
Download resources for churches and ministries: http://gimmeshelter.ministryresources.org.
EWTN’s Coverage of the March For Life
EWTN, the first and only television network to air
complete live coverage of the March for Life, announces
dramatically expanded coverage.
This year, thanks to a new wireless camera unit, EWTN will be able to walk alongside the crowd from the National Mall, all the way down Constitution Avenue, and right up the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court itself. You will see the March as only those who actually walk the route will see it!
Plus, the EWTN 360 technology that was introduced during World Youth Day is back - and this time we are "live." The app allows you, the viewer, to click on an event and to get a 360 degree view of the venue just by moving your cursor! (If you missed WYD360, click here: http://www.ewtn.com/rio2013/wyd360.asp.) This means that you will be able to see MFL events on our website and Facebook page (www.facebook.com/ewtnonline) just as if you were at the Prayer Vigil, standing in the crowd listening to the speakers, or marching down Constitution Avenue.
EWTN's coverage will be anchored in the studio by EWTN President Doug Keck and EWTN Chaplain Fr. Joseph Mary, and in the field by EWTN TV and Radio Anchors Teresa Tomeo ("Catholic Connection," "Catholic View for Women"), Mike Romano and Elena Rodriguez. Also, look for special in-studio coverage of your Facebook posts, tweets (www.twitter.com/ewtn) and videos (send to marchforlife@ewtn.com) by the EWTN Communications Department.
Then, in the evening, don't miss a special one-hour "EWTN News Nightly with Colleen Carroll Campbell," which will feature a great lineup of pro-life leaders and speakers who will discuss the past, present and future of the pro-life movement as well as the fight against abortion.
Here's the lineup:
- Opening Mass of the National Prayer Vigil for Life airs live at 6:30 p.m. ET, Tuesday, Jan. 21 from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC.
- Closing Mass of the National Prayer Vigil for Life airs live at 7:30 a.m. ET, Wednesday, Jan. 22, also from the Basilica.
- Coverage of the 2014 March for Life begins at 9 a.m. ET, Wednesday, Jan. 22, with encores at 10 p.m. ET, Wednesday night, and 9:30 a.m. ET, Sunday, Jan. 26.
- Coverage of the Youth Mass for Life from the Verizon Center will air at 4 p.m. ET, Wednesday, Jan. 22.
- "EWTN News Nightly With Colleen Carroll Campbell:" One-hour special begins at 6 p.m. ET, Wednesday, Jan. 22.
If you can't be at the March itself, please join us for our Virtual March for Life on EWTN's Facebook page, www.facebook.com/ewtnonline, and Twitter page, www.twitter.com/ewtn, as well as on TV, Radio, our Mobile app, and streaming live on the Internet! As we always say, "EWTN is Everywhere!"
EWTN Global Catholic Network, in its 33rd year, is available in over 230 million television households in more than 140 countries and territories. With its direct broadcast satellite television and radio services, AM & FM radio networks, worldwide short-wave radio station, Internet website www.ewtn.com, electronic and print news services, and publishing arm, EWTN is the largest religious media network in the world.
###
For Information, Please Contact: Michelle Johnson Director of Communications EWTN Global Catholic Network 5817 Old Leeds Road Irondale, Alabama 35210-2198 USA (205) 795-5769 - Office (205) 441-6248 !- Cell (205) 795-5781 - Fax
The CatholicTV Network Launches New Website
The CatholicTV Network launches its new website, on January 15, 2014. The website has been designed using the latest technology with the user experience in mind.
The CatholicTV Network invites viewers to explore the new enhanced website with improved functionality, offering viewers worldwide a broad range of faith based programming available online as well as a 24/7 live stream.
“After two years of thought and work, the new web presence for The CatholicTV Network is live, said the network President, Father Robert Reed. “The site has been designed to target our growing viewership online and projects a clean and professional appearance which is dynamically elegant. Our focus is on image and video, telling the story of individual Catholics and the Church Universal.”
CatholicTV.com is designed to become the premier destination for Catholics, keeping viewers up-to-date with Vatican events and programming from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and parishes nationwide. The CatholicTV Network broadcasts programming relevant to Catholic viewers, including live religious services, talk shows, devotional programs, educational programming, entertainment, and children's programs.
New content is added to CatholicTV.com daily. The CatholicTV Network is also available on all mobile devices for iOS and Android.
The CatholicTV Network invites viewers to explore the new enhanced website with improved functionality, offering viewers worldwide a broad range of faith based programming available online as well as a 24/7 live stream.
“After two years of thought and work, the new web presence for The CatholicTV Network is live, said the network President, Father Robert Reed. “The site has been designed to target our growing viewership online and projects a clean and professional appearance which is dynamically elegant. Our focus is on image and video, telling the story of individual Catholics and the Church Universal.”
CatholicTV.com is designed to become the premier destination for Catholics, keeping viewers up-to-date with Vatican events and programming from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and parishes nationwide. The CatholicTV Network broadcasts programming relevant to Catholic viewers, including live religious services, talk shows, devotional programs, educational programming, entertainment, and children's programs.
New content is added to CatholicTV.com daily. The CatholicTV Network is also available on all mobile devices for iOS and Android.
Listen to “Children of the Sun” at fscc-calledtobe.org
Sean Michael Showalter’s “Children of The Sun” is the discerning Song of the Month, a free download at www.fscc-calledtobe.org.
Austin based Singer – Songwriter Sean Michael Showalter wrote “Children of the Sun” “….to promote brotherly love and to look beyond the walls our egos have built up. Even I, a reborn Christian, admit that my beliefs are a result of my collective life experience and my perception of reality. I hope my song will help us look beyond the differences in religions and ideologies that separate us; that it can help us practice love and tolerance for one another in-spite of our disagreements; that we are all God’s children, brothers and sisters, or Children of the Sun.”
Showalter was born with a gift of singing and was creating songs on the playground as early as he can remember. Earliest influences include the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Stevie Wonder. Currently he also plays with Red Street, a mix of Gospel, Blues, Funk, Soul, Rock & Jazz. The band exists to promote the Gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and to help heal the world through music.
In his recent Gospel of Joy, Pope Francis also invites “all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her, since ‘no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord’. The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step towards Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms.”
Established in 1869, the Roman Catholic Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity serve in Catholic Health Care, Education and Parish-Community Service in the Midwest, Central and Southwest United States.
http://www.fscc-calledtobe.org
The World needs you. God Calls You. We Invite You. Catholic vocations.
 |
| Sean Michael Showalter |
Showalter was born with a gift of singing and was creating songs on the playground as early as he can remember. Earliest influences include the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Stevie Wonder. Currently he also plays with Red Street, a mix of Gospel, Blues, Funk, Soul, Rock & Jazz. The band exists to promote the Gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and to help heal the world through music.
In his recent Gospel of Joy, Pope Francis also invites “all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her, since ‘no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord’. The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step towards Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms.”
Established in 1869, the Roman Catholic Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity serve in Catholic Health Care, Education and Parish-Community Service in the Midwest, Central and Southwest United States.
http://www.fscc-calledtobe.org
The World needs you. God Calls You. We Invite You. Catholic vocations.
Vatican Official Endorses Film: Gimme Shelter
His Excellency Bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, provided his glowing endorsement of GIMME SHELTER, a forthcoming movie with a distinctly pro-life message.
Here is his full endorsement:
“The remarkable narrative of GIMME SHELTER expresses a powerful reality and the heroic love of a mother for her unborn child. Exploring the hard questions regarding the meaning of life, family, love and suffering, our heroine, “Apple,” fights against all odds and finds hope in the kindness of some key people, including a hospital chaplain who expresses the true nature of a priestly soul of service, guidance, and the deep Love of God for every single man, woman and child from the moment of conception. Out of rejection shines the courageous beauty of a mother’s love, and out of tragedy, shines hope!”
Based on the inspiring true events, GIMME SHELTER centers on the courageous story of Agnes “Apple” Bailey (Vanessa Hudgens) and her incredible path to motherhood as a pregnant, homeless teenager. Forced to flee her abusive mother (Rosario Dawson), and turned away by her Wall Street father (Brendan Fraser), Apple finds herself on a desperate and isolated journey of survival. In the depths of despair, she meets a compassionate stranger (James Earl Jones), who ultimately leads her to salvation and unprecedented support in a suburban shelter for homeless teenagers. With gained confidence, and the warmth of her new home, Apple breaks from her inhibiting past, embracing the future with clarity and hope.
The film is inspired by the David and Goliath true story of devout Catholic Kathy DiFiore and her founding of Several Sources Shelters – a maternity home for unwed mothers that has changed lives all across New Jersey. DiFiore has been lauded by presidents and worked hand-in hand with Mother Teresa to change shelter laws in New Jersey.
Check out the trailer: http://youtu.be/pE42YdC70E8.
Hudgens immersed herself in the character and delivers a transformative and stunning performance. To prepare, she lived for weeks in pregnancy shelters, interacting with the young, homeless mothers who also appear in the film, completely altering her appearance unrecognizable.
Written and directed by Ronald Krauss, GIMME SHELTER opens in theaters across the country on January 24, 2014.
Saint Kateri Tekakwitha: New Cartoon for Kids
In an effort to help fill the void in quality media for Catholic children, GenOneArt.com launched a campaign to produce a saint inspired, Catholic cartoon utilizing Kickstarter.com to fund the production.
Up to 40% Off the Best Books of 2013
The production will focus on the virtue of courage in the life of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, and her devotion to Jesus on the Cross as her source of strength in times of persecution.
Kickstarter.com is a crowd-funding platform where anyone can help support a project in exchange for incentives also known as “backer rewards.” The rewards for supporting the project include everything from a DVD of the finished cartoon, to original artwork from the development of the project. The goal is to raise at least $60,000 to finish production and to help launch a marketing campaign for the film.
Here is a link to the project page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/464375548/saint-kateri-tekakwitha-catholic-cartoon?ref=live
Up to 40% Off the Best Books of 2013
The production will focus on the virtue of courage in the life of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, and her devotion to Jesus on the Cross as her source of strength in times of persecution.
Kickstarter.com is a crowd-funding platform where anyone can help support a project in exchange for incentives also known as “backer rewards.” The rewards for supporting the project include everything from a DVD of the finished cartoon, to original artwork from the development of the project. The goal is to raise at least $60,000 to finish production and to help launch a marketing campaign for the film.
Here is a link to the project page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/464375548/saint-kateri-tekakwitha-catholic-cartoon?ref=live
CRS Calls on Congress to Back Funding for Central African Republic
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is asking Congress to ensure robust funding to meet the staggering humanitarian needs in the Central African Republic (CAR), where a violent conflict has forced hundreds of thousands from their homes. The request was made in a statement submitted to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations which held a hearing yesterday on how to address the crisis that has played out in CAR since a coup overthrew the government in March.
In the statement, CRS commends the United States for providing $100 million to support French and African Union peacekeeping troops who are working to quell the violence and atrocities carried out by Muslim rebels and Christian self-defense groups, but stresses the critical need for humanitarian funding as well.
“A scaled-up humanitarian response in CAR requires improved security and immediate stability,” says Bill O’Keefe, Vice President for Government Relations and Advocacy. “And it must be funded at similar levels as the support to African Union troops.”
This echoes a statement released by the Religious Leaders’ Platform in CAR, stressing that reconciliation and unity are possible among all Central African women and men. The leaders include Bishop Dieudonné Nzapalainga, Archbishop of Bangui and President of the Episcopal Conference of Central Africa; Pastor Nicolas Guerkekoyame-Gbangou, President of the Alliance of Evangelicals in Central Africa (AEC); and Em Oumar Kobine Layama, President of the Central African Islamic Community (CICA).
“We reiterate that the violence and abuses have stripped people of all their resources. A message of reconciliation that is not supported by technical and logistical support for humanitarian relief and reconstruction may not have the desired effects,” they state.
While the increased presence of French and African Union peacekeeping troops has improved the security in parts of CAR, the humanitarian situation remains dire and appears to be worsening. Hundreds of thousands of people, Christians and Muslims who have fled their homes in fear of being attacked, are now in makeshift camps throughout the country, and staying with host families. They are in desperate need of food, water, shelter and health services. Living in cramped and unsanitary conditions, many have already died of preventable diseases or malnutrition.
CRS has worked to meet some of the most immediate needs by providing food vouchers as well as emergency food rations. In Lobaye District, CRS distributed food vouchers to more than 10,800 people. In the capital of Bangui and in other parts of the country, CRS has begun emergency food deliveries to thousands of people seeking refuge on church grounds.
CRS is also urging support for activities to restore the traditional peace that existed among CAR’s religious communities before this conflict spawned divisions along faith lines. CRS’ work with CAR’s religious leaders and inter-religious youth groups is focused on community-based solutions to dispel distrust between Christians and Muslims, as well as strategies to prevent people from taking on arms, and fueling the conflict.
“Civil society, media and religious entities in CAR are essential for supporting violence prevention initiatives, and they must be supported in the same way as the humanitarian needs are,” the CRS statement reads. “CRS urges the State Department to assess the viability and adequate funding of essential peacebuilding activities to prevent further escalation of the conflict.”
CRS is seeking support for people like Reisa, a Catholic who attended a recent meeting of Christian and Muslim youth in Bangui, CAR’s capital. She pointed out that lack of security is behind the religious divide. “Sometimes people are willing to do the right thing,” she said, “but when confronted with hunger, rape and roving gangs attacking them, people will respond with violence just to survive, not necessarily out of hate.”
# # #
Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. The agency alleviates suffering and provides assistance to people in need in nearly 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. For more information, please visit crs.org or crsespanol.org.
God and Necessity: Book Review
Brian Leftow, God and Necessity, Oxford University Press, 2012, 560pp., $110.00
Like their medieval scholastic predecessors, the best known Continental Rationalist philosophers of the seventeenth century (Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, and Leibniz) held that God exists necessarily, and that all possibilities along with all necessary truths about anything actual or possible are grounded in God. They were not all in agreement, however, as to how those possibilities and necessities are grounded in God. The contrast between the views of Descartes (1596-1650) and Leibniz (1646-1716) may serve as background for approaching what I take to be the most thoroughly articulated and argued study of the relation between God and necessity (and possibility) that our own time has produced.
Among Descartes’s early modern opponents on this point was Leibniz. In his view, possibilities and necessities are grounded not in God’s will but in God’s understanding. Moreover, the main question about possibilities and necessities to which Leibniz offers a theological answer is not what makes them true but what grounds their being. He holds that “if there is a reality in the Essences or possibilities, or indeed in the eternal truths, that reality must be founded in something existing and Actual.” So how can there be truths so absolutely necessary that they could and would be true even if no contingent being existed? Leibniz’s answer is that the reality of possibilities and of the eternal truths “must be founded … in the Existence of the necessary Being, in which being possible is sufficient for being Actual.” Specifically, he holds that “the Understanding of God is the region of eternal truths, or of the ideas on which they depend” — that they have ontological standing, or being, insofar as they are understood by God and represented in the divine understanding. This is for Leibniz the basis of an argument for the existence of God “from the reality of eternal truths” — that is, from the assumption that there are truths so necessary that they could and would be true no matter what, even if nothing contingent existed (Monadology, §§43-45). He treats this, in effect, as an inference to the best explanation of the reality of facts of possibility and necessity, where the explanation is metaphysical, and turns on a constitutive rather than a causal relationship.
Fifty years ago, such arguments were easily dismissed as of merely antiquarian interest, since almost all philosophers and many philosophical theologians were convinced that the existence of God could not be absolutely necessary. Since the 1960s, such certainties have been dissolving in the analytical mainstream of Anglophone philosophy, as assumptions about what necessity must or could be have come to seem problematic. In this philosophical context there is more room for theories which involve, as Brian Leftow’s does, the hypothesis of a necessarily existing deity.
In his magnum opus, God and Necessity, Leftow stakes out a position that is intermediate between those of Descartes and Leibniz, having points of agreement with each of them. It is the voluntarist aspect of the position, however, that gets the most emphasis and the most vigorous argument in the book — perhaps because Leftow realistically expects it to be the target of the most opposition. The tightrope on which he seeks to balance his position is a distinction between what he calls “secular” and “non-secular” truths and possibilities. There is not room here to present a full account of Leftow’s developed distinction; but, roughly speaking, a secular sentence is one that if true would state no truth about God, or about divine attributes or events, though it might imply one. Secular sentences are about actual or possible creatures of God, or their (secular) attributes and interactions. Leftow’s position is theologically voluntarist about possibilities and necessities expressed by secular sentences — almost all of them — but not in general about those expressed by non-secular sentences, which he sees as determined by God’s nature (Leftow, 248-50, 275-76).
As regards God’s existence, in particular, Leftow holds that “His nature makes Him necessary — His choice cannot alter this. Thus … God exists necessarily.” Similarly, as regards pure logic and pure mathematics, Leftow agrees with Leibniz that their ontological grounds are to be found in God’s thought — God’s actual thinking. And in these cases “God’s nature dictated the result. He would have so thought no matter what.”
Leftow has relatively little to say about logic and mathematics and their ontological grounding. His “main concern,” he writes, “is a theory of secular truths” — a theological theory about them and the status they may have as possible or even necessary (Leftow, 251). Secular possibilities and necessities, Leftow insists, do not follow from, and are not determined or guaranteed by, God’s nature. Thus he opposes what he calls “deity theories,” which view “secular” possibilities and necessities as grounded in deity, where by “deity” is meant the nature or individual essence of God. Leibniz’s theory of the reality of eternal truths is a prime example of the “deity theories” that Leftow opposes. Contrary to them he holds that secular attributes enter logical space by God’s thinking them up — though the divine essence allowed God not to think them up and thus to omit them from logical space. Since God thought up secular attributes, on Leftow’s view, almost all propositions involving them acquire their status as necessary, contingent, or impossible by a voluntary divine decision that was not predetermined by the divine essence.
The following is a simplified (but I hope not weakened) form of Leftow’s “main argument against deity theories” (Leftow, 209 ff.). The “necessary truth about creatures alone” that he proposes as an example is “water = H2O.” Analytical metaphysicians of possibility and necessity have in fact discussed this example, and most regard it as a necessary truth. Issues could be raised about the role of the word “water” in the example, however, which would lead us away from our theological topic. We can avoid those issues by substituting the closely related identity “H2O = H2O.” That will not seriously affect character of Leftow’s argument. He will not claim that a negation of “H2O = H2O” could be true; but he argues that “H2O = H2O” would be untrue “were H2O not possible nor so much as impossible, but instead just not a denizen of logical space.”
How could that be? Well, on Leftow’s theory, nothing in God’s nature requires that God think about H2O, and if God had never thought up H2O and therefore had never created it, H2O would not be a denizen of logical space, and the proposition “H2O = H2O” would not exist and therefore would not be true. On a deity theory such as Leibniz’s, however, it follows from the nature of God, and is therefore necessary, that if God exists, God does think of H2O and H2O is a denizen of logical space, as an object of God’s thought, and of course “H2O = H2O” (or “If H2O exists, then H2O = H2O”) is a necessary truth. And this is just what Leftow objects to, for in implying that necessarily, if God exists, then H2O is a denizen of logical space, the deity theory also implies that necessarily, if H2O were not a denizen of logical space, then God would not exist. “Surely,” Leftow protests, “deleting a chemical property from logical space should not affect whether God exists.” It would be better, he concludes, to avoid “deity theories” of the grounding of “secular” possibilities and necessities (by which of course he does not mean avoiding all theological theories on the topic).
One may respond, of course (as Leftow recognizes), that according to a deity theory these implications really pose no threat at all to God’s existence. For if the deity theory is right, both God’s existence and God’s understanding of H2O, and the truth of “H2O = H2O” as represented in God’s understanding, are absolutely necessary, as reasons included in God’s essence ensure that there is no possible alternative to them. Leftow grants, in effect, that the conditional proposition “necessarily, if H2O were not a denizen of logical space, then God would not exist” is not just counter-factual but counter-possible (having an antecedent clause that could not possibly be true), if a deity theory is right. He claims, however, that it would be wrong to dismiss it as not worth worrying about, because it is also counterintuitive. He argues that “deity is the property having which makes God divine. Intuitively, facts about water do not help make God divine,” and are thus “irrelevant to the job the property deity does.” For what is relevant to God’s possession of such intuitively divine attributes as omniscience and omnipotence is not what secular possibilities there are in logical space, but what God knows, and can do, about whatever secular possibilities are there (Leftow, 240).
The deity theorist’s best response to this argument, perhaps, is that “making God divine” is too narrowly religious a description of “the job” belonging to deity as a property, if we understand deity (as Leftow does) as the essence of God. More comprehensively, one might think, “the job” that God’s essence does includes, metaphysically, being the nature by reason of which God necessarily exists as the ground of being, the being on which all facts of every sort depend. If the job of God’s essence is as large as that, is it really counterintuitive to suppose that secular possibilities such as that of H2O are too petty or too profane to be provided for in the divine essence? Moreover, a deity theory like Leibniz’s account of “the reality of eternal truths” may be appealing precisely to philosophers who find it unintuitive to suppose that there is any way in which being such a thing as H2O actually is could have failed to be at least possible.
Harder to shrug off for Leibnizian deity theorists may be Leftow’s efforts to problematize their assumption that the divine essence could contain all the materials needed for representing or thinking of all the secular possibilities. How, Leftow asks, could those possibilities be represented in the divine mind? He focuses on a view, found in Thomas Aquinas and other medieval theologians, according to which the properties that possible creatures would have are imitations (imperfect, of course) of the divine nature, so that God is able to know those creaturely properties by knowing how his own essence is capable of being imitated (Summa Theologiae, Part I, qu. 15, article 2.). The imitation relation of creatures to God is part of Leibniz’s philosophy also, though not part of his account of possibilities as ontologically grounded in God’s understanding. Leftow argues that while the imitability of the divine nature might in this way give God very general concepts of created substance or created mind as such, it does not offer a promising way for God to conceive of such creatures in complete detail, nor to conceive of material creatures at all (Leftow, 153 ff.). Leftow, rightly, does not treat this as a decisive objection to deity theories. The great obstacle to accepting it as a decisive objection is the assumption of most theists that God’s cognitive powers are infinitely greater than ours. That assumption suggests that the divine nature might indeed enable God to have certain ideas that we have, even if we have not managed to see how that would be possible. Nevertheless, if (as I agree) deity theorists (including Aquinas and Leibniz) have not provided a convincing development of an imitability theory, or any other theory, of how the divine essence might enable God to understand all possible creatures, that is a weakness in their theories.
Can Leftow do better? He does offer a theory of how God has concepts of possible and actual creatures. It is “a causal theory of divine content” — a reductive theory, according to which concepts in God’s mind are reducible to God’s possession of certain powers. He holds that “the ontology of God’s mental content need invoke only powers of and causings by God and divine mental events.” For example, “God’s thinking that Fido is a dog is that part of His life that would in conjunction with certain other divine mental events bring it about that Fido is a dog” (Leftow, 312-15). Both the appeal and the implausibility of this striking view, I think, are rooted in the same point: that the divine concept of the producible object is to get its content from God’s knowledge of possible divine mental events that would produce the object in actual existence, rather than the other way around. The attraction of the view is that it promises a way of avoiding problems that have been found in other accounts, including resemblance accounts, of mental representation. The implausibility is that the view does not clearly provide for God to know more about what it is for Fido to be a dog than that it is whatever certain divine powers and mental events would cause.
To put more pressure on Leftow’s view, consider the thought that a responsible creator of the actual world had better have known more about what it is like for Fido to feel pain than just how that occurrence would be causally related to powers and mental events in the creator. Leftow does not disagree. Such considerations lead him to entertain the view that “God can have some quality of experience whence … He can fully conceive of pain.” But how is that consistent with his apparently sweeping claim that “the divine mental event which is God’s thinking that P is simply that part of the divine life that has or would have effects suitable to that content”? He does suggest that God might be able to have the full conception of pain “merely from His understanding of His power to have” a relevant quality of divine experience. Where the question is how God can know what it is like to feel pain, however, no appeal to supposed knowledge of divine powers to cause or to have an experience (as distinct from actually having a relevant experience) has to my mind much more explanatory force than the simple “somehow or other” which is as available to the deity theorist as to Leftow (Leftow, cf. 286, 314).
God and Necessity is a monumental work on its topic, rich in theoretical alternatives critically discussed — many more of them than could be discussed here. I found it extremely stimulating and rewarding. Its likeliest readers are professional philosophers. It presents an intricate tissue of analytical arguments, some of them formulated partly in the symbolism of modern formal logic. It is hard reading, perhaps harder than it needed to be. But it is definitely a book to be reckoned with.
ISSN 2325-8357. The Marginalia Review of Books. Protected by Creative Commons.
Descartes’s main question about possibilities and necessities is what makes the “eternal truths,” as he calls them, true. His answer is voluntarist to an extent that is unusual in Western philosophical and theological thought. He held that the eternal truths are voluntarily caused or legislated by God. He claimed that though they are in fact necessary, God could have made them false, declaring in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (vol. III (1991), 358-9):
I do not think that we should ever say of anything that it cannot be brought about by God. For since every basis of truth and goodness depends on his omnipotence, I would not dare to say that God cannot bring it about that … 1 and 2 are not 3. I merely say that he has given me such a mind that I cannot conceive … a sum of 1 and 2 which is not 3.Descartes’s view on this subject found some support in the seventeenth century but has never been prevalent in modern philosophical theology. It is worth noting, however, that in the twentieth century a voluntarism that looks similar in some ways, and comparably extreme, was asserted (without reference to Descartes) by the great (and self-consciously not philosophical) theologian Karl Barth in his Church Dogmatics (vol. II, 533-42).
Among Descartes’s early modern opponents on this point was Leibniz. In his view, possibilities and necessities are grounded not in God’s will but in God’s understanding. Moreover, the main question about possibilities and necessities to which Leibniz offers a theological answer is not what makes them true but what grounds their being. He holds that “if there is a reality in the Essences or possibilities, or indeed in the eternal truths, that reality must be founded in something existing and Actual.” So how can there be truths so absolutely necessary that they could and would be true even if no contingent being existed? Leibniz’s answer is that the reality of possibilities and of the eternal truths “must be founded … in the Existence of the necessary Being, in which being possible is sufficient for being Actual.” Specifically, he holds that “the Understanding of God is the region of eternal truths, or of the ideas on which they depend” — that they have ontological standing, or being, insofar as they are understood by God and represented in the divine understanding. This is for Leibniz the basis of an argument for the existence of God “from the reality of eternal truths” — that is, from the assumption that there are truths so necessary that they could and would be true no matter what, even if nothing contingent existed (Monadology, §§43-45). He treats this, in effect, as an inference to the best explanation of the reality of facts of possibility and necessity, where the explanation is metaphysical, and turns on a constitutive rather than a causal relationship.
Fifty years ago, such arguments were easily dismissed as of merely antiquarian interest, since almost all philosophers and many philosophical theologians were convinced that the existence of God could not be absolutely necessary. Since the 1960s, such certainties have been dissolving in the analytical mainstream of Anglophone philosophy, as assumptions about what necessity must or could be have come to seem problematic. In this philosophical context there is more room for theories which involve, as Brian Leftow’s does, the hypothesis of a necessarily existing deity.
In his magnum opus, God and Necessity, Leftow stakes out a position that is intermediate between those of Descartes and Leibniz, having points of agreement with each of them. It is the voluntarist aspect of the position, however, that gets the most emphasis and the most vigorous argument in the book — perhaps because Leftow realistically expects it to be the target of the most opposition. The tightrope on which he seeks to balance his position is a distinction between what he calls “secular” and “non-secular” truths and possibilities. There is not room here to present a full account of Leftow’s developed distinction; but, roughly speaking, a secular sentence is one that if true would state no truth about God, or about divine attributes or events, though it might imply one. Secular sentences are about actual or possible creatures of God, or their (secular) attributes and interactions. Leftow’s position is theologically voluntarist about possibilities and necessities expressed by secular sentences — almost all of them — but not in general about those expressed by non-secular sentences, which he sees as determined by God’s nature (Leftow, 248-50, 275-76).
As regards God’s existence, in particular, Leftow holds that “His nature makes Him necessary — His choice cannot alter this. Thus … God exists necessarily.” Similarly, as regards pure logic and pure mathematics, Leftow agrees with Leibniz that their ontological grounds are to be found in God’s thought — God’s actual thinking. And in these cases “God’s nature dictated the result. He would have so thought no matter what.”
Leftow has relatively little to say about logic and mathematics and their ontological grounding. His “main concern,” he writes, “is a theory of secular truths” — a theological theory about them and the status they may have as possible or even necessary (Leftow, 251). Secular possibilities and necessities, Leftow insists, do not follow from, and are not determined or guaranteed by, God’s nature. Thus he opposes what he calls “deity theories,” which view “secular” possibilities and necessities as grounded in deity, where by “deity” is meant the nature or individual essence of God. Leibniz’s theory of the reality of eternal truths is a prime example of the “deity theories” that Leftow opposes. Contrary to them he holds that secular attributes enter logical space by God’s thinking them up — though the divine essence allowed God not to think them up and thus to omit them from logical space. Since God thought up secular attributes, on Leftow’s view, almost all propositions involving them acquire their status as necessary, contingent, or impossible by a voluntary divine decision that was not predetermined by the divine essence.
The following is a simplified (but I hope not weakened) form of Leftow’s “main argument against deity theories” (Leftow, 209 ff.). The “necessary truth about creatures alone” that he proposes as an example is “water = H2O.” Analytical metaphysicians of possibility and necessity have in fact discussed this example, and most regard it as a necessary truth. Issues could be raised about the role of the word “water” in the example, however, which would lead us away from our theological topic. We can avoid those issues by substituting the closely related identity “H2O = H2O.” That will not seriously affect character of Leftow’s argument. He will not claim that a negation of “H2O = H2O” could be true; but he argues that “H2O = H2O” would be untrue “were H2O not possible nor so much as impossible, but instead just not a denizen of logical space.”
How could that be? Well, on Leftow’s theory, nothing in God’s nature requires that God think about H2O, and if God had never thought up H2O and therefore had never created it, H2O would not be a denizen of logical space, and the proposition “H2O = H2O” would not exist and therefore would not be true. On a deity theory such as Leibniz’s, however, it follows from the nature of God, and is therefore necessary, that if God exists, God does think of H2O and H2O is a denizen of logical space, as an object of God’s thought, and of course “H2O = H2O” (or “If H2O exists, then H2O = H2O”) is a necessary truth. And this is just what Leftow objects to, for in implying that necessarily, if God exists, then H2O is a denizen of logical space, the deity theory also implies that necessarily, if H2O were not a denizen of logical space, then God would not exist. “Surely,” Leftow protests, “deleting a chemical property from logical space should not affect whether God exists.” It would be better, he concludes, to avoid “deity theories” of the grounding of “secular” possibilities and necessities (by which of course he does not mean avoiding all theological theories on the topic).
One may respond, of course (as Leftow recognizes), that according to a deity theory these implications really pose no threat at all to God’s existence. For if the deity theory is right, both God’s existence and God’s understanding of H2O, and the truth of “H2O = H2O” as represented in God’s understanding, are absolutely necessary, as reasons included in God’s essence ensure that there is no possible alternative to them. Leftow grants, in effect, that the conditional proposition “necessarily, if H2O were not a denizen of logical space, then God would not exist” is not just counter-factual but counter-possible (having an antecedent clause that could not possibly be true), if a deity theory is right. He claims, however, that it would be wrong to dismiss it as not worth worrying about, because it is also counterintuitive. He argues that “deity is the property having which makes God divine. Intuitively, facts about water do not help make God divine,” and are thus “irrelevant to the job the property deity does.” For what is relevant to God’s possession of such intuitively divine attributes as omniscience and omnipotence is not what secular possibilities there are in logical space, but what God knows, and can do, about whatever secular possibilities are there (Leftow, 240).
The deity theorist’s best response to this argument, perhaps, is that “making God divine” is too narrowly religious a description of “the job” belonging to deity as a property, if we understand deity (as Leftow does) as the essence of God. More comprehensively, one might think, “the job” that God’s essence does includes, metaphysically, being the nature by reason of which God necessarily exists as the ground of being, the being on which all facts of every sort depend. If the job of God’s essence is as large as that, is it really counterintuitive to suppose that secular possibilities such as that of H2O are too petty or too profane to be provided for in the divine essence? Moreover, a deity theory like Leibniz’s account of “the reality of eternal truths” may be appealing precisely to philosophers who find it unintuitive to suppose that there is any way in which being such a thing as H2O actually is could have failed to be at least possible.
Harder to shrug off for Leibnizian deity theorists may be Leftow’s efforts to problematize their assumption that the divine essence could contain all the materials needed for representing or thinking of all the secular possibilities. How, Leftow asks, could those possibilities be represented in the divine mind? He focuses on a view, found in Thomas Aquinas and other medieval theologians, according to which the properties that possible creatures would have are imitations (imperfect, of course) of the divine nature, so that God is able to know those creaturely properties by knowing how his own essence is capable of being imitated (Summa Theologiae, Part I, qu. 15, article 2.). The imitation relation of creatures to God is part of Leibniz’s philosophy also, though not part of his account of possibilities as ontologically grounded in God’s understanding. Leftow argues that while the imitability of the divine nature might in this way give God very general concepts of created substance or created mind as such, it does not offer a promising way for God to conceive of such creatures in complete detail, nor to conceive of material creatures at all (Leftow, 153 ff.). Leftow, rightly, does not treat this as a decisive objection to deity theories. The great obstacle to accepting it as a decisive objection is the assumption of most theists that God’s cognitive powers are infinitely greater than ours. That assumption suggests that the divine nature might indeed enable God to have certain ideas that we have, even if we have not managed to see how that would be possible. Nevertheless, if (as I agree) deity theorists (including Aquinas and Leibniz) have not provided a convincing development of an imitability theory, or any other theory, of how the divine essence might enable God to understand all possible creatures, that is a weakness in their theories.
Can Leftow do better? He does offer a theory of how God has concepts of possible and actual creatures. It is “a causal theory of divine content” — a reductive theory, according to which concepts in God’s mind are reducible to God’s possession of certain powers. He holds that “the ontology of God’s mental content need invoke only powers of and causings by God and divine mental events.” For example, “God’s thinking that Fido is a dog is that part of His life that would in conjunction with certain other divine mental events bring it about that Fido is a dog” (Leftow, 312-15). Both the appeal and the implausibility of this striking view, I think, are rooted in the same point: that the divine concept of the producible object is to get its content from God’s knowledge of possible divine mental events that would produce the object in actual existence, rather than the other way around. The attraction of the view is that it promises a way of avoiding problems that have been found in other accounts, including resemblance accounts, of mental representation. The implausibility is that the view does not clearly provide for God to know more about what it is for Fido to be a dog than that it is whatever certain divine powers and mental events would cause.
To put more pressure on Leftow’s view, consider the thought that a responsible creator of the actual world had better have known more about what it is like for Fido to feel pain than just how that occurrence would be causally related to powers and mental events in the creator. Leftow does not disagree. Such considerations lead him to entertain the view that “God can have some quality of experience whence … He can fully conceive of pain.” But how is that consistent with his apparently sweeping claim that “the divine mental event which is God’s thinking that P is simply that part of the divine life that has or would have effects suitable to that content”? He does suggest that God might be able to have the full conception of pain “merely from His understanding of His power to have” a relevant quality of divine experience. Where the question is how God can know what it is like to feel pain, however, no appeal to supposed knowledge of divine powers to cause or to have an experience (as distinct from actually having a relevant experience) has to my mind much more explanatory force than the simple “somehow or other” which is as available to the deity theorist as to Leftow (Leftow, cf. 286, 314).
God and Necessity is a monumental work on its topic, rich in theoretical alternatives critically discussed — many more of them than could be discussed here. I found it extremely stimulating and rewarding. Its likeliest readers are professional philosophers. It presents an intricate tissue of analytical arguments, some of them formulated partly in the symbolism of modern formal logic. It is hard reading, perhaps harder than it needed to be. But it is definitely a book to be reckoned with.
ISSN 2325-8357. The Marginalia Review of Books. Protected by Creative Commons.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)