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Metaphysics of God: Divine Attributes, Arguments and Religious Language
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AQA 7172 Paper 2 Section A: divine attributes and the foreknowledge problem, the ontological, teleological and cosmological arguments, the problem of evil, religious experience and religious language — with 25-mark essay technique and full mark-scheme answers.
🎯 Learning Objectives
Explain and evaluate the definitions of God as omnipotent, eternal and omniscient, including the paradox of the stone, Descartes vs Aquinas/Kenny, and Boethius vs Swinburne on eternality (Spec 3.3.1).
Explain and evaluate the ontological argument — Anselm (Proslogion 2 and 3), Descartes and Malcolm — with Gaunilo's perfect-island reply and Kant's 'existence is not a predicate' (Spec 3.3.2).
Explain and evaluate the teleological argument — Paley's watch, Swinburne's regularity — with Hume's critiques and Darwin's theory of evolution (Spec 3.3.2).
Explain and evaluate the cosmological argument — Aquinas' Three Ways, the Kalam argument, Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason — with Hume's and Russell's critiques (Spec 3.3.2).
Explain and evaluate the logical problem of evil (Mackie's inconsistent triad, Plantinga's free will defence) and the evidential problem (Rowe's fawn, Hick's vale of soul-making) (Spec 3.3.3).
Explain and evaluate religious experience (James, Swinburne's credulity and testimony, Flew's verification challenge) and religious language (via negativa, Aquinas' analogy, Ayer, Hare, Hick) (Specs 3.3.4–3.3.5).
Use AQA command words correctly: pure AO1 explanation on 3/5/12-mark questions; 'arguing with intent' and balanced evaluation only on 25-mark essays.
📋 Key Definitions and Core Concepts
Paradox of the stone: Can an omnipotent God create a stone too heavy for God to lift? If yes, God cannot lift it; if no, God cannot create it — either way a limitation. Aquinas/Kenny: the task is self-contradictory, so not genuinely possible and no limit on power.
Boethius' eternity: God's eternity is 'the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of unending life' (Consolation V) — God is timeless, outside time, beholding past, present and future in a single eternal present.
Everlasting God: Swinburne/Wolterstorff: God is not timeless but everlasting — existing at every moment of time, knowing at each time everything it is then logically possible to know (including past and present, but not future free choices).
That than which nothing greater can be conceived: Anselm's definition of God (Proslogion 2) — even the fool understands it; since existing in reality is greater than existing in the understanding alone, God must exist in reality as well.
Necessary existence: Existence that cannot be lacked without incoherence — that which cannot be conceived of as non-existent (Anselm, Proslogion 3). Malcolm: necessary existence cannot be contingent, so God's existence is either impossible or necessary.
Existence is not a predicate: Kant's critique: 'is' adds no property to a concept, it only asserts that the concept is instantiated (100 real thalers and 100 imagined thalers share one concept) — so defining God as having existence, or counting existence among the perfections, is illegitimate.
Principle of sufficient reason: Leibniz: everything has a sufficient reason for why it is so and not otherwise; the reason for a contingent thing lies outside it, so the whole series of contingent things requires a sufficient reason outside itself — a necessary being.
Per se ordered causal series: Aquinas: a series where each member has no independent causal power but only derivatively (hand–stick–stone). Such a series cannot be infinite without a first member; this grounds the First and Second Ways, as opposed to a merely temporal (per accidens) series.
Inconsistent triad: Mackie ('Evil and Omnipotence'): (1) God is omnipotent, (2) God is wholly good, (3) evil exists — these cannot all be true together, since a wholly good being eliminates evil as far as it can and an omnipotent being can eliminate it entirely.
Free will defence / transworld depravity: Plantinga: a defence (showing God and evil are logically consistent), not a theodicy. Transworld depravity: it is possible that every creaturely essence goes wrong in at least one action in any world God could actualise, so God cannot create significantly free creatures who never sin.
Vale of soul-making: Hick (Evil and the God of Love): evil is instrumental — a lawlike world at 'epistemic distance' from God is the environment in which genuinely free persons develop virtues (courage, compassion), with universal salvation ultimately remedying suffering.
Principles of credulity and testimony: Swinburne: credulity — if it seems to S that X is present, then probably X is present, absent special considerations (known illusions, unreliable witness); testimony — others' reports of their experiences are probably accurate. Religious experience is therefore prima facie evidence of God.
📌 Key Points
Omnipotence (Aquinas/Kenny): every power it is logically possible to have — the stone task is self-contradictory, not a genuine limit; Descartes: God can do the logically impossible, having created the eternal truths.
Boethius: God is timeless — 'the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of unending life'; foreknowledge becomes timeless seeing, imposing only conditional necessity on free acts.
Ontological (Anselm Proslogion 2/3, Descartes, Malcolm) vs Kant: existence is not a real predicate (100 thalers) — the crucial debate is whether necessary existence escapes Kant.
Cosmological: Aquinas' Three Ways (per se regress), Kalam (no actual infinities), Leibniz (sufficient reason); Hume (fallacy of composition) and Russell ('the universe is just there, and that's all').
Evil: Mackie's triad answered by Plantinga (free will defence + transworld depravity); Rowe's fawn answered by theodicy (Hick) or sceptical theism. Flew's falsification challenge answered by Hare's bliks and Hick's eschatological verification.
The nature of God: omnipotence, eternality, omniscience (Spec 3.3.1)
Omnipotence and the paradox of the stone. Can an omnipotent God create a stone too heavy for God to lift? Either answer shows a limit: if yes, God cannot lift it; if no, God cannot create it. Aquinas/Kenny: omnipotence is having every power it is logically possible to have — 'a stone an omnipotent being cannot lift' is self-contradictory, not a genuine task, so no limitation (Kenny: God has 'every power which it is logically possible to possess'). Descartes: God can do the logically impossible — God freely created the eternal truths (2+2=4) and could have made them otherwise, so logic does not bind God. Critique: then claims about God cease to be coherent assertions, and the paradox re-runs (can God make himself non-omnipotent?) with no principled answer; for AQA, Aquinas/Kenny is the mainstream line, Descartes the extreme.
Eternality: outside time or everlasting?Boethius (Consolation, Book V): God's eternity is 'the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of unending life' — God is timeless, beholding all times in one eternal present. Swinburne/Wolterstorff: God is everlasting — existing at every moment of time. Against timelessness: a timeless God cannot know tensed truths ('it is now raining'), act at a moment, respond to prayer or relate personally — not the God of worship (Kretzmann, Wolterstorff). Against everlastingness: a God in time changes (learns) as events occur — change implying imperfection — and knows at each time only what is then knowable.
Omniscience and free will. Kenny-style definition: God knows everything it is logically possible to know. The problem: if God infallibly knows I will choose tea tomorrow, I cannot do otherwise — not free; if I am free, God lacked the knowledge — not omniscient. Boethius' solution: no fore-knowledge — from outside time God sees my free choice occurring, as I see a friend walking now; and God's seeing does not make it happen. Necessity is conditional, not absolute: if God sees me walk, then I walk — fixing nothing, just as your watching me walk now does not compel me. Response: this trades on timeless knowledge with the problems above; the everlasting alternative (Swinburne) lets God lack knowledge of future free choices — not yet there to be known — but a God who learns is not the immutable, perfect being of classical theism. Either solution buys compatibility with freedom at a cost.
Arguments for God's existence: ontological, teleological, cosmological (Spec 3.3.2)
Ontological (a priori). Anselm (Proslogion 2): (1) even the fool understands 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived'; (2) it exists in the understanding; (3) existing in reality is greater; (4) if God existed only in the mind, a greater being — God in reality — could be conceived: contradiction; (5) so God exists in reality. Proslogion 3: God cannot be conceived not to exist — necessary existence is greater than contingent. Gaunilo: the same logic 'proves' a most perfect island. Anselm's reply: the form works only where the definition is coherent — for islands a greater is always conceivable; the status is God's alone. Descartes: existence is a perfection — a supremely perfect being lacking it is as incoherent as a triangle without three angles. Malcolm: necessary existence cannot be contingent, so God's existence is either impossible or necessary — and the concept is coherent, so necessary. Kant: existence is not a (real) predicate — '100 real thalers' and '100 imagined thalers' share one identical concept; 'is' only asserts instantiation, so building existence into God's essence as a 'perfection' begs the question. Malcolm's rejoinder: Kant targets contingent existence; necessary existence — not causally dependent — may be a genuine predicate. This Malcolm-vs-Kant exchange is the crucial A* debate.
Teleological (a posteriori).Paley: a watch on a heath — parts co-adjusted for purpose — compels a watchmaker; nature shows design qua purpose (the eye) and qua regularity (planetary order) in far greater degree, so its author is a vastly greater intelligence: God. Hume's critiques (Dialogues, pre-Darwin): the analogy is weak — the universe is unique, more organism than machine; even if designed, the effect matches only the cause, licensing a finite, imperfect, possibly plural designer, not the infinite God; order may be internal to the universe itself. Darwin: natural selection explains apparent design (eye, wing) without a designer, undercutting design qua purpose. Swinburne's reply: Darwin explains spatial order, not the temporal regularity of natural laws; regularity 'cries out' for explanation, and theism — one being, simple properties — is the simplest explanation of the whole regular universe.
Cosmological (a posteriori).Aquinas' Three Ways (Summa Theologiae I q.2 a.3): First Way — whatever is moved is moved by another, and in a per se series (hand–stick–stone) members have no independent causal power, so the series cannot be infinite: first unmoved mover; Second Way — nothing is its own efficient cause, so a first efficient cause; Third Way — if everything were contingent, at some time nothing existed and nothing would exist now; so there is a necessary being: God. Hume: fallacy of composition — every part having a cause does not give the whole one; the universe itself may be the necessary being; regress is not shown contradictory. Kalam (al-Ghazali, Craig): (1) whatever begins to exist has a cause; (2) the universe began — an actual infinite cannot exist (Hilbert's Hotel) or be traversed by successive addition; (3) the cause is timeless, spaceless, powerful and, freely choosing to create, personal: God — though quantum events lack determinate causes and the Big Bang need not begin time. Leibniz: by the principle of sufficient reason, the series of contingent things needs a reason outside itself: a necessary being. Russell (v Copleston, 1948): the principle is not self-evident, and explaining the parts need not explain the whole — 'the universe is just there, and that's all'.
The problem of evil and religious experience (Specs 3.3.3–3.3.4)
Logical problem (Mackie). Inconsistent triad: (1) God is omnipotent; (2) God is wholly good; (3) evil exists — a wholly good being eliminates evil as far as it can, an omnipotent being can eliminate it entirely, yet evil exists: the three cannot all be true. Solving the logical problem requires only showing the set is consistent. Free will defence (Plantinga): significantly free creatures are a great good; freedom excludes causal determination, so God cannot guarantee free creatures whose free actions are all good. Mackie's counter — why not create people who freely always choose good? — is met by transworld depravity: it is possible that every creaturely essence performs at least one wrong action in any world God could actualise; if so, God could not actualise a world with free creatures and no evil. Conclusion: God and evil are logically consistent — the logical problem fails. Note: a defence shows consistency; a theodicy gives God's actual reasons.
Evidential problem (Rowe) and soul-making (Hick). Rowe's fawn: burned in a forest fire, it dies in agony unseen by any human; no apparent good could require such suffering. An omnipotent, wholly good God would prevent pointless evil, so the abundance of apparently gratuitous suffering makes God's existence improbable — a probabilistic, not logical, challenge. Hick's vale of soul-making: a lawlike world at 'epistemic distance' from God is the environment in which free persons develop virtues — courage, compassion — through real challenges; evil is instrumental to soul-making, with universal salvation ultimately remedying suffering. Critiques: dysteleological evil — the fawn, animal suffering before humans, horrendous evils (Phillips) — seems to exceed any soul-making value; and a world with less evil but equal virtue-building seems possible, which Hick must deny.
Religious experience. Spec types: corporeal and intellectual visions, voices, the sense of presence. James (Varieties): mystical states are ineffable, noetic, transient and passive; validity is pragmatic — 'by their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots': transformed, morally serious lives count as evidence. Swinburne: the principle of credulity — if it seems to S that X is present, probably X is present, absent special considerations; the principle of testimony — others' reports are probably accurate. So religious experience is prima facie evidence of God. Flew's verification challenge: Wisdom's explorer's gardener becomes invisible, intangible and scentless through successive 'qualifications' until the claim asserts nothing — 'death by a thousand qualifications'; likewise an 'experience of God' surviving every disconfirmation describes nothing, so it cannot justify belief. Responses: Hare's blik and Hick's eschatological verification (below); and Swinburne's principles, which put the burden on the sceptic to show special considerations apply.
Religious language and AQA 7172 exam technique (Spec 3.3.5)
Via negativa.Pseudo-Dionysius (Mystical Theology) and Maimonides: God transcends every positive predicate; speak only by denial — 'God is good' means 'God is not evil', protecting transcendence and avoiding anthropomorphism. Critique: negation without affirmation tells us almost nothing — an imperfect being is also 'not evil' — and if no positive claim is legitimate, God-talk fails to identify anything. Examiners reward naming this limit.
Aquinas' analogy. Univocal language (same sense) fails: God is not 'wise' as Socrates — anthropomorphic. Equivocal language (entirely different sense) fails: 'God is good' then conveys nothing. Aquinas: religious language is analogical — terms apply proportionately: as 'healthy' is predicated of medicine and urine only by relation to the animal's health (analogy of attribution), God's goodness and wisdom are predicated by relation to God's nature (analogy of proportion). God-talk is meaningful and non-literal. Critique: unclear how much the analogy tells us — 'proportionate to a nature we cannot conceive' may explain too little (Black: analogy 'tells us nothing').
Verification, falsification and bliks.Ayer's verification principle: a statement is meaningful only if analytic or empirically verifiable (in principle); 'God exists' and 'God loves me' are neither — religious language is not false but meaningless. Critiques: the principle is itself neither analytic nor verifiable — self-refuting — and universal scientific laws fail strong verifiability. Hick's eschatological verification: the pious and sceptical lives diverge after death — heaven verifies theism — so religious claims are verifiable in principle, though this is weaker verification than Ayer demands. Hare's bliks: the paranoid and the trusting student see the same dons' behaviour differently; a blik is an unfalsifiable interpretive stance, and religious language expresses bliks, not world-assertions — so Flew's challenge misfires. Critique: Hare concedes religion makes no factual claims, and offers no clear test (beyond pragmatism) for sane vs mad bliks.
Exam technique: Paper 2. Paper 2 (3 hours, 100 marks): Section A Metaphysics of God, Section B Metaphysics of mind — five questions per section worth 3, 5, 5, 12 and 25 marks. Everything except the 25-marker is pure AO1: define terms, set out the argument, illustrate — evaluation on 12-markers is redundant and loses marks. The 25-marker (5 AO1 + 20 AO2) quotes a claim and demands evaluation: argue with intent — thesis in the introduction, best objection met with a weak then a strong response, conclusion with no new ideas. Learn definitions verbatim (Boethius' eternity, Kenny's omnipotence, Mackie's triad) and keep the named debates separate.
Common pitfalls and examiner tips (click to expand)
Logical vs evidential: the logical problem needs a consistency answer (Plantinga's transworld depravity); the evidential problem (Rowe) needs a probability assessment — do not answer Rowe's fawn with transworld depravity.
Ontological ≠ design: the ontological argument is a priori; teleological and cosmological are a posteriori — never answer a 'from reason alone' question with Paley.
Boethius precision: quote 'the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of unending life' and distinguish conditional from absolute necessity before evaluating.
Kalam ≠ Aquinas: Kalam argues a temporal beginning (no actual infinities); Aquinas argues per se causal dependence — the critiques differ accordingly.
Religious language quad: Ayer = meaninglessness (verification); Flew = empty assertions (falsification); Hare = non-assertive bliks; Hick = eschatological verification.
💡 Worked Example
Exam-style: 'Kant is right: existence is not a predicate, and so the ontological argument fails.' Evaluate this claim. (25 marks)
Mark-scheme logic: AO1 required: set out Anselm's Proslogion 2 (God = 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived'; exists in the understanding; greater to exist in reality; contradiction if God existed in the mind alone) and Proslogion 3 (necessary existence), Descartes' 'existence is a perfection' (triangle analogy) and Malcolm's version; explain Kant's critique — existence is not a real predicate ('is' adds no property; 100 real thalers and 100 imagined thalers share one concept). AO2 required: argue with intent, e.g. FOR the claim — (1) if 'is' adds nothing, defining God as existing, or counting existence among the perfections, begs the question: the argument analyses a concept and then asserts the concept is instantiated; (2) Malcolm's 'necessary existence' does not escape: treating a logical status as an attribute repeats exactly the error Kant identifies, so the argument still fails a priori. Consider the strongest objection AGAINST the claim: Kant targets ordinary, contingent existence; necessary existence — existence that cannot be lacked without incoherence — may be a genuine predicate, in which case Proslogion 3 survives, and Anselm's reply to Gaunilo (the argument's form applies to God alone) blocks the 'proves too much' objection; respond: even if necessary existence is a predicate, the move from coherence to instantiation needs defence — conceivability of a necessary being may not entail its instantiation. Weigh up (the crucial debate is Kant vs Malcolm on whether necessary existence is a predicate) and conclude consistently (e.g. the claim fails: Kant refutes arguments from contingent existence, but a modalised ontological argument treating necessary existence as a predicate remains live).
❓ Practice Questions & Mark Schemes
Explain the paradox of the stone and one response to it. (5 marks)
Answer: AO1 only — no evaluation. State the paradox: can an omnipotent God create a stone too heavy for God to lift? If God can, there is something God cannot do (lift the stone); if God cannot, there is something God cannot do (create it) — either way omnipotence fails. Explain one response: Aquinas/Kenny — omnipotence means having every power it is logically possible to possess; 'a stone an omnipotent being cannot lift' is a self-contradictory description, not a possible task, so God's inability to create it is no limitation of power. (Alternatively: Descartes — God can do the logically impossible, having freely created the eternal truths, so the paradox wrongly assumes logic binds God.)
Explain Boethius' solution to the problem of God's foreknowledge and human free will. (12 marks)
Answer: AO1 only — no evaluation. The problem: if God infallibly knows in advance that I will choose X tomorrow, I cannot do otherwise — so the choice is not free; if I could do otherwise, God's knowledge would be false, so God would not be omniscient. Boethius' solution rests on God's eternity: God's eternity is 'the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of unending life' — God exists outside time, not at every moment, and beholds all times in one eternal present. So God has no fore-knowledge: God sees my future free choice as it happens, in God's eternal present, just as I see a friend walking now; God's knowledge is observational, not causally prior to the choice, and does not produce it. Boethius distinguishes conditional from absolute necessity: 'if God sees me walking, I am walking' is only conditionally necessary — the necessity attaches to the conditional, not to my will, exactly as your watching me walk now does not compel me. Conclusion: timeless knowledge of free acts leaves the acts free, so on Boethius' account divine omniscience and human freedom are compatible.
Explain Aquinas' Third Way. (5 marks)
Answer: AO1 only. The Third Way argues from contingency to a necessary being: (1) we find things that are possible to be and not to be — contingent things, which are generated and corrupted; (2) such things at some time did not exist; (3) if everything were contingent, at some time nothing existed; (4) if nothing existed then, nothing could have begun to exist, and nothing would exist now — contradiction, since things clearly do exist; (5) therefore not everything is contingent: there must exist something necessary — something that cannot fail to exist — and this we call God. Aquinas adds that necessary things get their necessity from themselves or from another, tracing back to a being necessary through itself.
Explain Mackie's inconsistent triad and Plantinga's free will defence. (12 marks)
Answer: AO1 only — no evaluation. Mackie: the three claims (1) God is omnipotent, (2) God is wholly good, (3) evil exists cannot all be true together — a wholly good being eliminates evil as far as it can, an omnipotent being can eliminate evil entirely, yet evil exists; so at least one must be given up or qualified. The logical problem demands a demonstration that the set is consistent, not an explanation of particular evils. Plantinga's free will defence: God valued significantly free creatures; freedom is incompatible with the causal determination of choices, so God cannot create creatures who are free and whose free actions are all good; moral evil is the price of a great good. Mackie's objection: God could create beings who always freely choose the good — freedom does not rule this out. Plantinga's transworld depravity: it is possible that every creaturely essence suffers from transworld depravity — in any world God could have actualised, that essence performs at least one wrong free action; if that possibility is actual, God could not actualise a world containing free creatures and no moral evil. Conclusion: Plantinga has described a possible state of affairs in which God and evil coexist, so the triad is not inconsistent and the logical problem of evil fails.
'Religious experience is no basis for belief in God because claims about God are unfalsifiable.' Evaluate this claim. (25 marks)
Answer: AO1 required: set out religious experience (corporeal/intellectual visions, voices, sense of presence; James' four marks of mysticism and pragmatic validation 'by their fruits'); Swinburne's principles of credulity and testimony; Flew's falsification challenge (Wisdom's gardener, 'death by a thousand qualifications'); responses — Hare's bliks and Hick's eschatological verification. AO2 required: argue with intent, e.g. AGAINST the claim — (1) Swinburne's principle of credulity: perceptual reports are prima facie reliable ('if it seems X is present, probably X is present'), and it is the sceptic, not the believer, who must show special considerations (illusion, insanity, unreliable witness) apply; testimony extends this to others' reports, so experiences of God are genuine evidence; (2) Hick: 'God exists' is verifiable in principle — after death the pious and sceptical lives diverge — so God-talk is not unfalsifiable in the way 'the gardener is invisible...' is. Consider the strongest objection FOR the claim: Flew — believers qualify 'experiencing God' until it asserts nothing, since no test could disconfirm it, and unfalsifiable claims justify nothing; Hare's blik reply concedes this by making religion non-assertive, and James' pragmatic test measures psychological fruits, not truth. Respond: credulity treats experience-of-God as ordinary perception, which resists Flew's escalating qualifiers; and a blik is not the kind of claim that needs verification, so its immunity does not show it worthless. Weigh up and conclude consistently (e.g. the claim fails: religious experience, via credulity and testimony, provides prima facie evidence, and eschatological verification blocks the unfalsifiability charge — though only fallible, rebuttable evidence).
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