\u201cGod can do ANYTHING he wants.\u201d\u00a0 So say Preston Sprinkle and Francis Chan in their book \u201cErasing Hell.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s fair to say that this proposition is the cornerstone of Sprinkle and Chan\u2019s theodicy of Hell.\u00a0 \u201cWon\u2019t God get what he wants?\u201d\u00a0 So asks Rob Bell in his book \u201cLove Wins.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s also fair to say that this question, along with the belief that God wants everyone to be saved, is the cornerstone of Bell\u2019s theodicy of Hell.<\/p>\n
Both Sprinkle \/ Chan and Bell focus on God\u2019s will<\/em>.\u00a0 But is there something missing from their theodicies?\u00a0\u00a0 Theologically, the question concerns the relation<\/em> of God\u2019s will to His nature.\u00a0 Philosophically, the question relates to whether \u201cuniversal\u201d substances exist apart from their particular instantiations (\u201cuniversals\u201d), or whether substances are merely names for particular instances of things (\u201cnominalism\u201d).<\/p>\n Consider an apple.\u00a0 What is<\/em> an apple?\u00a0 Is this particular apple on my kitchen table one instantiation of the substance \u201capple\u201d \u2013 a substance with some sort of universal metaphysical \u00a0(\u201cbeyond-\u201c or \u201cabove-\u201c physical) properties that are shared by all apples?\u00a0 Or is \u201capple\u201d simply a name I apply to this object before me as a result of some observable similarities with other objects (other things we also call \u201capple\u201d) that have no metaphysical connection to the \u201capple\u201d on my table?<\/p>\n For many who claim a modern scientific worldview, there are only particular objects called \u201capple,\u201d which are more or less related to other particular objects in morphology and chemical composition, all of which are categorized as \u201capples\u201d for the sake of convenience.\u00a0 What is \u201creal,\u201d in this view, is merely chemistry and physical laws, not any substance \u201capple.\u201d\u00a0 In contrast, for those who believe in universal properties, \u201capple\u201d implies properties that are real and transcendent of any one apple.\u00a0 This apple on my table has properties such as \u201cred\u201d in common with other apples because those common properties transcend any one particular apple.\u00a0 (For a good overview of the problem of \u201cuniversals,\u201d see the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy<\/a>).<\/p>\n The modern nominalist view of \u201cnature\u201d derives from and is related to nominalist and \u201cvoluntarist\u201d views of God in late medieval philosophy.\u00a0 The medieval scholastic philosophers wrestled with this question:\u00a0 Is God\u2019s will a product of God\u2019s rational nature, such that God only calls things \u201cgood\u201d that are substantively \u201cgood\u201d?\u00a0 Or is God\u2019s will utterly unconstrained, such that God is free to call \u201cgood\u201d whatever He desires to call \u201cgood,\u201d without any limiting principle (referred to as \u201cvoluntarism\u201d)?<\/p>\n One of the key figures in the development of these ideas was the monk and philosopher William of Ockham (c. 1288-1348).\u00a0 Ockham took a strong \u2013 some would argue extreme \u2013 view of Divine sovereignty in relation to morality and ethics.\u00a0 Here is an example of Ockham\u2019s voluntarist approach:<\/p>\n I say that although hate, theft, adultery and the like have a bad circumstance annexed de communi \u00a0lege<\/em> [\u201cby the common law\u201d] so far as they are done by someone who is obliged by divine precept to the contrary, nevertheless, in respect of everything absolute in those acts they could be done by God without any bad circumstance annexed. And they could be done by the wayfarer even meritoriously if they were to fall under a divine precept, just as now in fact their opposites fall under divine precept . . . But if they were thus done meritoriously by the wayfarer, then they would not be called or named theft, adultery, hate, etc., because those names signify such acts not absolutely but by connoting or giving to understand that one doing such acts is obliged to their opposites by divine precept<\/em>.\u00a0 (Ockham, Various Questions, Vol. 5 (emphasis added)).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For Ockham, then, there was no \u201cabsolute\u201d notion of \u201cthe good.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cGood\u201d is just a word we apply to whatever God commands.\u00a0 The parallels to both Sprinkle \/ Chan\u2019s and Bell\u2019s theodicies are obvious.<\/p>\n This sort of view sounds humble and pious.\u00a0 Who are we to question God?\u00a0 The problem, however, is that it begs the question of who \u201cGod\u201d is.<\/em><\/p>\n Before the rise of nominalism, Christian theology generally held that God\u2019s being and will are inseparable. \u00a0\u00a0God is \u201csimple\u201d and does not have separate \u201cparts\u201d such as \u201cbeing\u201d and \u201cwill.\u201d\u00a0 This means that God wills and acts as He is<\/em>.\u00a0 If God acts in ways that are \u201cloving,\u201d it is because \u00a0in His Triune being, \u201cGod is<\/em> love\u201d (1 John 4:8); and if God acts in ways that are \u201cjust\u201d it is because in His Triune being God is<\/em> just.<\/p>\n To be sure, Christian theology has always held that God\u2019s essential nature is fundamentally<\/em> unknowable by human beings, because God is radically other than His creation.\u00a0 However, many of the Church\u2019s great thinkers believed we could know about<\/em> God either through His \u201cenergies\u201d in creation (e.g., many of the Eastern Fathers) or by \u201canalogy\u201d to the being of creation (e.g., Thomas Aquinas).\u00a0 At the very least, the apophatic theologians held that we can speak about what God is not<\/em> like.<\/p>\n Nominalism and voluntarism, in contrast, divorced God\u2019s will from His being, and thus drastically limited the role of theology for ethics.\u00a0 As theologian John Milbank notes,<\/p>\n In the thought of the nominalists . . . the Trinity loses its significance as a prime location for discussing will and understanding in God and the relationship of God to the world.\u00a0 No longer is the world participatorily enfolded within the divine expressive Logos<\/em>, but instead a bare divine unity starkly confronts the other distinct unities which he has ordained. . . .\u00a0 This dominance of logic and of the potential absoluta<\/em> is finally brought to a peak by Hobbes:\u00a0 \u2018The right of Nature, whereby God reigneth over men, and punisheth those that break his Lawes, is to be derived, not from his creating them, as if he required obedience as of gratitude for his benefits; but from his Irresistible Power.\u2019\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 (John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, at pp. 15-16 (quoting Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan<\/em>.))<\/p><\/blockquote>\n