What Has God Got to Do With It?
Everything, Actually
There are essentially three ways of answering the question: What has God got to do with it?
Many theists—certainly myself included—would answer: God has everything to do with everything. Other theists might say that God has something to do with some things. Atheists, of course, would say that God has nothing to do with anything.
I’m mostly thinking aloud at the moment, but follow along and let’s see where this goes.
As a classical theist, I don’t believe there’s any aspect of reality that ultimately floats free of God—everything there is, is either produced by God or grounded in God.
To give just a few brief examples of what I mean…
God accounts for the actual existence of everything apart from Himself, insofar as God just is His existence (a being of pure actuality) and is responsible for imparting existence to any contingent essence that is really actual.
God also accounts for the moral dimension, since morality arises from the teleological perfection of (rational) natures—and all natures or essences are ultimately grounded in God, both with respect to their ratio (as imitations of the divine—i.e., divine ideas) and—as just mentioned—with respect to their actual existence.
Likewise, God accounts for the modal dimension insofar as every possible being and every possible world has the hidden de re necessity of being a creature of God and is possible only insofar as it somehow images God or is compatible with God’s goodness.1
Going further still, God has everything to do with universals (assuming a moderate realism) and with the laws of logic, since these too are ultimately grounded in different aspects of the divine—whether through the theory of divine ideas, or through the view that logic “tracks” onto-logic; that is, it simply describes the very nature of being itself (which, for classical theists, God just is).
God ultimately accounts for composition as well (indeed, my Millerian argument paper is essentially an argument for God from mereology)—that is, for the tightly unified nature of certain entities, where, in some cases, the parts depend upon the whole (or at least upon the substantial form that grounds the unity of the material components). For example, the cells of a cat depend upon the cat itself.
Finally (at least for now), God has everything to do with us as human beings: He is the cause of our existence and the end for which we were created. He offers us the beatific vision—the ultimate point of arrival.
I’m giving a highly condensed story, of course—one that certainly invites many questions about the details. But those details can be found in the centuries of work produced by classical theists, all converging on the view that all of reality ultimately, in some way or other, traces back to this single source: the Absolute.
Granted: much of how every aspect of reality ultimately traces back to God depends upon—or even requires—a particular metaphysical system. A broad Aristotelianism, say, with respect to morality, mereology, epistemology, and even mathematics. But so what? After all, much of what motivates classical theism is that it ultimately emerges as the final point of complete intrinsic intelligibility—the ultimate necessary condition for the entire metaphysical program: what many philosophers simply call the Perennial Philosophy.
OK, so that’s classical theism. It begins in metaphysics (or the philosophy of nature) and seeks a unified theory of everything—one that leads to a particular conception of God: a being who is purely actual, ontologically simple, and whose essence just is His existence.
Other forms of theism don’t claim that God has everything to do with everything, but only that God has something to do with some things. For example, certain non-classical theists may hold that there are basic moral principles—necessary, yet brute—that do not depend on God in any meaningful sense. Still, they might argue that God plays a crucial role in our knowledge of those principles. Others may suggest that God exists alongside a realm of independently existing abstract objects, with which God has no causal or explanatory connection, even though both God and these abstracta play complementary roles in explaining various worldly phenomena. Some theists go further still, proposing that God exists in mutual dependence with the world, or that God is limited in power, knowledge, or both.
Unsurprisingly, many theists in this camp are not operating within the same paradigm as classical theists. Often, they are not working from a well-established metaphysical program at all, whether homegrown or inherited. Instead, they begin with some particular idea or image of God—perhaps drawn from their interpretation of Scripture or their religious tradition—and then do their best to piece together an entire worldview around it.2 Said differently, they start with certain theological data points (for example, that God is personal) and then build a metaphysical view around that—adopting whatever positions seem useful for securing that commitment and discarding whatever doesn’t. Nominalism, if it suits some purpose; fictionalism, if one is struggling to deal with aseity and abstract objects—or whatever.3
I call this project Piecemeal Theism, and let me just say—politely—that I am not overmuch a fan of this approach.
Another version of piecemeal theism arises when someone comes to believe in God through a single isolated argument—or perhaps a slew of arguments—that are not metaphysically unified. Maybe they encounter the fine-tuning argument or the argument from consciousness and find them convincing. They begin to believe in God, but the God they believe in is, once again, metaphysically thin. In this case, God is not a theoretical posit within a broader metaphysical framework, but simply the conclusion of a particular syllogism. This God is understood to be extremely powerful and immaterial—fine—but the believer hasn’t necessarily thought through what grounds morality, or universals, or modality, or any of that. They just find an argument for God persuasive, but haven’t really attempted to connect that belief to other fundamental features of reality.
Perhaps, largely, the difference between the piecemeal theist and the classical theist is this: the former works with isolated arguments—which may themselves, unbeknownst to their proponent, be run from conflicting assumptions—producing (presumably) the conclusion of some powerful immaterial entity; the latter holds to a robust, metaphysically integrated theory of God.
Can the former eventually lead to the latter? Sure. In fact, I’ve seen many an initial piecemeal theist gradually turn toward classical theism precisely because of the very points I’m raising here. But… well… anyway.
Finally, the atheist says God has nothing to do with anything. The project here is to point to all the aspects of reality that the theists says God has something to do with, and then to tell a story about those aspects that makes no reference to God. From there, the sophisticated atheist will say that since God was not required to render intelligible any of these aspects, one is perfectly reasonable going on without belief in God.
Obviously, I don’t think the atheistic project is ultimately successful. However, as someone who tends to gravitate toward extremes, I find it, in many respects, more appealing than piecemeal theism. Either God is truly the Absolute—or He isn’t God at all.
P.S. Totally unrelated to anything in this post... but for the thirteen people who follow and take interest in my musical ventures (background: I play in a Milwaukee-area Van Halen tribute band called Top of the World): I recently picked up a Friedman Cali, and it plays like an absolute dream—basically, the superstrat I’ve been searching for. The camera audio doesn’t quite do it justice, but here are a few Van Halen licks anyway.
The Principles That Shape Our Philosophy (Whether We Admit It or Not)
You can learn a lot about someone from their controlling principles—that is, what motivates them, philosophically speaking. Sometimes people are explicit about their controlling principles; other times—often, in fact—they’re not. You have to sort of root around for them, and sometimes you find them, sometimes you don’t.
While I don’t think we can specify exactly where the line is below which the level of goodness becomes incompatible with God’s nature, I don't think it’s impossible to identify something that would clearly fall below it—like a world where there is just one burning kitten, for all eternity. What’s more, a successful theodicy, if one exists, aims to show that our world is not below such a line.
To be clear, we all start somewhere—and beginning with some inherited idea of God is not necessarily a bad thing; in fact, it’s simply the case for all of us. My point is just that once one makes that critically reflective turn and begins to engage seriously with philosophy—particularly the philosophy of God—certain approaches (indeed, controlling principles) are better than others. Some are more fruitful, more explanatory, more coherent. And you can probably guess which methodology I prefer.
Again, to be clear: I’m not saying that adopting a fictionalist position is inherently bad either. If someone arrives there through independent metaphysical investigation—fine. Fair enough. The problem, as I see it, is when someone adopts fictionalism (or nominalism, or whatever else) not because the arguments genuinely led them there, but primarily because it serves a theological convenience. That is, they begin with a predetermined theological commitment—often based on a personal interpretation of God—and then reach for whatever metaphysical commitments seem useful for safeguarding that commitment. From there, they latch onto whatever arguments support such commitments—not because they’ve been persuaded by the reasoning, but because they’ve already decided the conclusion is necessary to protect their theological data.
Another clarification: I’m also not saying that one’s broader commitments about God can’t reasonably lead one to revise other positions. They can. But this is most rational when one already has substantial rational weight behind their theistic commitment and, upon encountering downstream implications, reasonably concludes that it makes more sense to adjust certain auxiliary views than to abandon a well-grounded conception of God. (An example of this can be found in my forthcoming paper on content essentialism and modal collapse—available via open access soon, I hope.)