Weekly update 4

"The Shepherd," Edward Arthur Walton (1860-1922)

I'm not entirely sure whether I've chosen this image because (1) we get the anointing of David in the lectionary tomorrow, (2) it's in an exhibition of the Glasgow Boys that I might get to see if travel works out for me this summer, or (3) I've loved it ever since I saw it last year in Edinburgh.

Probably all of those reasons.

Anyway, the discipline of a weekly update forces me to acknowledge that I am now very slightly behind schedule -- just 800 words -- but still pleased with how things are going. I knew this chapter, which is trying to lay out Anselm's accounts of creation, the Trinity, and truth in a way that shows their interconnections, would be on the harder side.

This week's excerpt is the beginning of Chapter 4, "How things got started."

The conception of a being than which a greater cannot be thought is a powerful one: it generates an impressive list of divine attributes, unifies them conceptually, and even reveals that such a being cannot fail to exist. But it doesn’t tell us everything there is to know about God. Readers familiar with standard Christian doctrine may have noticed two sizeable omissions thus far: the doctrine that God is the Creator and the doctrine of the Trinity. Anselm does not try to argue that it is greater to be a creator than not to be a creator, nor does he try to argue that it is greater to be a Trinity than not to be a Trinity.

            There was at least some room in the tradition for an argument that it is greater to be a creator than not. One strand of Platonism taught that goodness tends to diffuse or share itself (bonum diffusivum sui). On that view it would be natural for an unsurpassably great being to communicate its goodness to other things: being a creator, or at least a source of other good things, would be an essential characteristic of a wholly good being. Anselm does not explicitly address that way of thinking, but it’s clear enough why it wouldn’t appeal to him. That than which a greater cannot be thought is wholly and unsurpassably good in himself, utterly self-sufficient, needing nothing outside himself in order to express or exemplify his goodness. A God who can’t be God without creating is no God at all.

            And suppose for a moment—just for the sake of argument—that it is necessary for a perfectly good being to “diffuse” his goodness to other things. Is this diffusion a result of that being’s choice, or does it just happen? Neither answer is tenable. If it just happens, creatures flow forth from God (the traditional expression is “emanate”) independently of God’s own intention, which undermines divine ultimacy and omnipotence. If God must choose to create, there’s something outside of God that constrains or compels his choice, which undermines divine aseity. So Anselm’s view is that God is equally great—equally God—whether he creates or not. We know he is a Creator because we know that things other than God exist, and given divine ultimacy and aseity, that means that God brought them into being by a free and uncompelled choice. 

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