God and Necessity

by Leftow, Brian

• ISBN13: 9780199263356
• ISBN10: 0199263353
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-11-08
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Brian Leftow offers a theory of the possible and the necessary in which God plays the chief role, and a new sort of argument for God's existence. It has become usual to say that a proposition is possible just in case it is true in some "possible world" (roughly, some complete history a universe might have) and necessary just if it is true in all. Thus much discussion of possibility and necessity since the 1960s has focused on the nature and existence (or not) of possible worlds.God and Necessityholds that there are no such things, nor any sort of abstract entity. It assigns the metaphysical 'work' such items usually do to God and events in God's mind, and reduces "broadly logical" modalities to causal modalities, replacing possible worlds in the semantics of modal logic with God and His mental events. Leftow argues that theists are committed to theist modal theories, and that the merits of a theist modal theory provide an argument for God's existence. Historically, almost all theist modal theories base all necessary truth on God's nature. Leftow disagrees: he argues that necessary truths about possible creatures and kinds of creatures are due ultimately to God's unconstrained imagination and choice. On his theory, it is in no sense part of the nature of God that normal zebras have stripes (if that is a necessary truth). Stripy zebras are simply things God thought up, and they have the nature they do simply because that is how God thought of them. Thus Leftow's essay in metaphysics takes a half-step toward Descartes' view of modal truth, and presents a compelling theist theory of necessity and possibility.

Author Biography

Brian Leftow has been the Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion in the University of Oxford since 2002, and a Fellow of Oriel College since 2003. Previously he taught at Fordham University (Bronx, NY). He is the author of Time and Eternity (Cornell University Press, 1991), Aquinas on Metaphysics (OUP, forthcoming) and numerous articles in philosophy of religion, medieval philosophy and metaphysics.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Modal basics	p. 29
Some solutions	p. 48
Theist solutions	p. 72
The ontology of possibility	p. 96
Modal truthmakers	p. 115
Modality and the divine nature	p. 135
Deity as essential	p. 175
Against deity theories	p. 209
The role of deity	p. 248
The Biggest Bang	p. 272
Divine concepts	p. 299
Concepts, syntax, and actualism	p. 317
Modality: basic notions	p. 333
The genesis of secular modality	p. 362
Modal reality	p. 391
Essences	p. 416
Non-secular modalities	p. 435
Theism and modal semantics	p. 444
Freedom, preference, and cost	p. 457
Explaining modal status	p. 476
Explaining the necessary	p. 498
Against theistic Platonism	p. 510
Worlds and the existence of God	p. 536
Bibliography	p. 552
Index	p. 569
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