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Possible Worlds and God's Creative Process: How a Classical Doctrine of Divine Creation Can Understand Divine Creativity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2012

Shawn Bawulski  and
James Watkins
Shawn Bawulski
Affiliation:
St Mary's College, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 8XN, [email protected]; [email protected]
James Watkins
Affiliation:
St Mary's College, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 8XN, [email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

In this article we will argue this thesis: even with classical theism and meticulous providence, one can properly say God exercises creativity. This is not merely to say that God is creative – which is perhaps tautologous given that God is the Creator – but further, it is to say that God's activity in relation to the cosmos displays creativity. We will examine open theism, which resides at the other end of the spectrum, in order to provide contrast with the position defended in this article. There are three aspects we intend to affirm in saying God exercises creativity. First, the product (the cosmos which God made) exhibits creativity. This should not be particularly contentious and we will not pursue this aspect here. Second, the agent (God) exhibits creativity. Third, the process exhibits creativity. Both of these latter aspects will be defended. In this article we argue that God's freedom, creation's contingency, creation's reality and actuality, and considerations from the incarnation all enable meaningful ways in which one can speak of divine creativity while still affirming classical theism and meticulous providence. First, in support of our thesis we will use possible world talk as a heuristic device. Possible world talk involves modal claims, modal logic and counterfactuals. We use this conceptual device, operating within a theistic framework, to approach with clarity theological issues such as the divine decree, creation ex nihilo and providence. Second, we will utilise a two-nature christology to speak meaningfully about divine creativity. Against those who describe God's creativity in terms of divine attributes, we suggest that it is possible to understand God's creativity in terms of the incarnation. Drawing upon the work of Thomas Weinandy, we suggest that it is possible to speak about God experiencing something genuinely new in the person of Christ. As such, one can hold to a classical doctrine of divine creation and use language associated with human creativity, such as ‘risk’, ‘process’ and ‘discovery’, to speak about God. We hope to demonstrate that the affirmation of divine creativity need not be exclusive to positions such as open theism.

Keywords

Classic theismcreationdivine freedomincarnationpossible worldsprovidence
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , May 2012 , pp. 174 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2012

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References

1 By the term ‘open theism’ we mean theologies which insist that God has left the future open, that the future is not fixed and, even for God, elements of what will happen are genuinely unknown and yet-to-be determined. Clark Pinnock is representative: see his Most Moved Mover: A Theology of God's Openness (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001).

2 This is Margaret Boden's definition of creativity and, though she emphasises the surprising element of creativity, it is very similar to other attempts within the discipline of psychology to define creativity. Her term ‘surprising’ must be understood against the background of what she calls a ‘generative system’: a set of rules, ideas and constraints which make creativity possible. Creativity, therefore, is not defined as freedom from constraints, but as working within constraints. That creativity should be surprising emphasises the relative freedom of the personal agent with respect to a specific generative system. Boden, Margaret, ‘What is Creativity?’, in Boden, (ed.), Dimensions of Creativity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), pp. 75–117Google Scholar.

3 Eccl 11:4–6.

4 See e.g. Fiddes, Paul, The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), p. 56Google Scholar; Vanstone, W. H., Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense: The Response of Being to the Love of God (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1977), pp. 65–6Google Scholar; Day Williams, Daniel, The Spirit and Forms of Love (Welwyn, Herts: James Nisbet & Co, 1968)Google Scholar.

5 Crisp, Oliver, ‘Calvin on Creation and Providence’, in John Calvin and Evangelical Theology, (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009), p. 53Google Scholar.

6 We are not the first to use possible world talk in this manner; e.g. see Ross, James F., ‘Creation’, Journal of Philosophy 77/10 (1980), pp. 614–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 E.g. see Crisp, , ‘Calvin on Creation and Providence’; Helm, Paul, John Calvin's Ideas (Oxford: OUP, 2004)Google Scholar.

8 John Calvin, Institutes, I.xvi.4.

9 Ibid.

10 White, Vernon, The Fall of a Sparrow (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1985), p. 133Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 130.

12 Possible world talk is a conceptual tool, a heuristic, and our usage in this article ought not to be regarded as offering a literal description of how God creates or decides to do so. We deem the invoking of possible world talk for creation and providence to be warranted by such theological concepts as God's freedom and creaturely contingency. Further, to cast God's creation in possible world terms is not to mechanise or depersonalise it, in fact we would argue that envisaging it as we do can allow for God's relationship to possible worlds to be highly personal and imaginative.

13 For contemporary defences of this view, see Freddoso, Alfred J. (ed.), The Existence and Nature of God, University of Notre Dame Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, 3 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 115–40Google Scholar; Grant, W. Matthews, ‘Aquinas among Libertarians and Compatibilists: Breaking the Logic of Theological Determinism’, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 75 (2001), pp. 221–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McCann, Hugh J., ‘Divine Sovereignty and the Freedom of the Will’, Faith and Philosophy 12/4 (1995), pp. 582–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Reno, Russell R., Genesis, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010), p. 34Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., p. 30.

16 There are worlds which are on the whole fundamentally good, and worlds which are fundamentally bad; there is no ‘best’ possible world (contra Leibniz). There are many good worlds which involve evil but are nonetheless on the whole fundamentally good because of some other good things which require the involvement of evil, that ‘brings the baggage of evil along with it’ in such a way that there is no possible world in which these good things obtain but evil does not.

17 E.g. ‘I believe we may say that God knows at any moment all that there is to be known about the future. That is, God knows it as the future . . . So God knows all the possibilities that exist for the world and its inhabitants . . . But God knows these as possibilities, not as actualities, because they have not yet happened.’ Fiddes, Paul, Participating in God (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2000), p. 142Google Scholar. John Polkinghorne presents what appears to be an even stronger position: ‘The Creator's kenotic love includes allowing divine special providence to act as a cause among causes. Of course, nothing could reduce talk about the Creator to terms that bear a valid analogy to creaturely discourse, other than that the divine condescension had allowed this to be so.’ Polkinghorne, John, ‘Kenotic Creation and Divine Action’, in Polkinghorne, (ed.), The Work of Love (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 104Google Scholar.

18 Foster, M. B., ‘The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science’, Mind 43 (1934), p. 462Google Scholar.

19 Vanstone, W. H., Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense: The Response of Being to the Love of God (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1977), pp. 65–6Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., p. 67.

21 Fiddes, Creative Suffering of God, p. 52.

22 Ibid., p. 56.

23 Fiddes, Participating in God, p. 143. He writes: ‘If God is going to allow the world to be creative with some reflection of God's creativity, there must be some things which are possible but which have not yet become actual for God. Further, when they actually happen there will be something new about them, something contributed by the world.’

24 Gen 2:7–9; Jer 18:1–10.

25 Prov 3:13–20, 8:22–31.

26 Job 38–41; Ps 8, 19, 74:12–17, 104, 136:4–9.

27 Foster, ‘Christian Doctrine of Creation’, p. 462.

28 Gaut, Berys, ‘Creativity and Skill’, in Krausz, Michael, Dutton, Denis and Bardsley, Karen (eds), The Idea of Creativity (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2009), p. 86Google Scholar.

29 Ibid. Similarly, Dustin Stokes argues for the following as a minimal condition for the creative process: ‘[features of a process] is creative only if [those features] could not, relative to the cognitive profile of the agent in question, have been done or performed before the time it actually was’. Stokes, , ‘The Metaphysics of Creativity’, in Stock, Kathleen and Thomson-Jones, Katherine (eds), New Waves in Aesthetics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 120Google Scholar.

30 Helm, John Calvin's Ideas, p. 100. See Calvin, Insitutes, II.iv.2.

31 Ibid., p. 125.

32 Helm uses ‘finding’ language when he interprets Calvin's position on evil. He writes, ‘Calvin's emphasis is not on God causing evil, nor on planting evil, but on him “finding” it, and on using what he finds for his own holy ends.’ John Calvin's Ideas, p. 125.

33 Use of the word ‘discovery’ is metaphorical: God in the divine nature does not change, but discovers new things about creation as a human rather than discovering new things directly as God.

34 See e.g. 1:1–3; 1 Cor 8:6; Eph 1:3–14; Col 1:15–16; Heb 1:2–3.

35 Lohse, Eduard, Colossians and Philemon, tr. Poehlmann, William R. and Karris, Robert J., in Koester, Helmut (ed.), Hermeneia: A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), pp. 49–52Google Scholar.

36 Lohse, Colossians and Philemon, p. 52.

37 Gunton, Colin, The Triune Creator (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 183Google Scholar.

38 Weinandy, Thomas, Does God Suffer? (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), p. 173Google Scholar.

39 Ibid., p. 206.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Mark 14, Matt 26, Luke 22, John 18. Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, John sheds doubt upon the extent to which Jesus subjectively experienced risk in his arrest and subsequent passion. John writes that, before Jesus was arrested, he knew ‘all that was going to happen to him’ (18:4).

43 Gunton, Colin, Christ and Creation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1992), p. 98Google Scholar.