Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Classical theism and the multiverse

  • Article
  • Published:
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Some analytic philosophers of religion argue that theists should embrace the hypothesis of the multiverse to address the problem of evil and make the concept of a “best possible creation” plausible. I discuss what classical theists, such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, might make of the multiverse hypothesis including issues such as: the principle of plenitude, what a classical theist multiverse could look like, and how a classical theist multiverse could deal with the problem of evil and the question of a best possible creation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. See God and the Multiverse: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Perspectives edited by Klass J. Kraay (New York: Routledge, 2015); Also, Michael Almeida, The Metaphysics of Perfect Beings (New York: Routledge, 2008): 135–164; Hud Hudson, The Metaphysics of Hyperspace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006): 163–181; Klaas Kraay, “Theism, Possible Worlds, and the Multiverse”, Philosophical Studies 147 (2010): 355–368; Timothy O’Connor, Theism and Ultimate Explanation (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008): 111–131; Donald Turner, “The Many-Universes Solution to the Problem of Evil”, in The Existence of God edited by R.M. Gale and A.R. Pruss (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2003): 143–159.

  2. The multiverse hypothesis has been used to attack “fine-tuning” arguments (Kraay (2015):3; Robert B. Mann, “Puzzled by Particularity” in Kraay (2015): 25–44).In that classical theists marshall different sorts of evidence for the existence of God they would not be concerned about undermining such arguments.

  3. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936 and 1964): 52. [David Lewis “recoins” the term in proposing his modal realism, On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1986): 86].

  4. Lovejoy (1936) 46–47. Though I appreciate Lovejoy’s scholarship, I do not concur with his thesis that the idea of a transcendent and self-sufficing deity logically contradicts that of a necessarily self-diffusive God. That the ultimate Good inevitably creates out of love, while remaining above every limiting category of creation, strikes me as coherent and plausible.

  5. Lovejoy (1936) 50.

  6. Lovejoy (1936) 55–58.

  7. Lovejoy (1936) 64. Plotinus Enneads II, 9,13; III, 3,7; III 2,11.

  8. Lovejoy (1936) 66.

  9. St. Augustine On the Literal Meaning of Genesis Book 4, Chapter 16, following the translation by John Hammond Taylor, S.J. (New York: Newman Press, 1982) 122. Taylor (note 32, p. 250) proposes that Augustine is not endorsing this argument, being adamant that creation is a free act of the divine will. But it is debatable whether Augustine ever accepted a libertarian view of free will. Certainly the later Augustine is a compatibilist, and the text does not suggest that Augustine rejects the argument.

  10. 83 Different Questions, 41, following the translation in David L. Mosher, Eighty-three Different Questions (The Fathers of the Church, Volume 70): A New Translation. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1982. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt32b1xb.

  11. Katherin Rogers, Anselm on Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) 185–205.

  12. Cur Deus Homo Book 1, Chapter 18. Anselm’s younger contemporary, Abelard, quotes the Timaeus again; were there good things that God fails to create, that would demonstrate—per impossibile—envy or jealousy in the divine makeup (Lovejoy (1936) 70–72).

  13. ST 1, Questions 19 and 25.

  14. Almeida (2008): 135–164. Almeida sometimes suggests that each possible world i.e. each universe of the theist modal realist multiverse, has its own “God”. For example he says that God has “counterparts” in other possible worlds; “Theistic Modal Realism?” in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion vol. 3, edited by Jonathan Kvanvig (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011): 1–15, at 11.

  15. Alexander Pruss, “Divine Creative Freedom”, in Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, Volume 7, edited by Jonathan Kvanvig (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016):215.

  16. Eighty-three Different Questions, 46.

  17. Almeida [(2008): 136–143] holds that it helps the theist to say that, hypothesizing a modal realist multiverse, God can’t prevent the various sufferings, since if He stops some in one world they must occur in another. But this seems to assume that God is confronted by independent abstracta with which He has to deal.

  18. Rogers (2008). See also Katherin Rogers, Freedom and Self-creation: Anselmian Libertarianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) Chapters 2 and 3.

  19. Turner (2003).

  20. Turner (2003): 155. Similar problems arise if “our” universe “branches” at points of indeterminism. Don N. Page defends this branching picture of a theist multiverse, “The Everett Multiverse and God,” in Kraay (2015): 45–58. Robert B. Mann notes a standard problem for the scientific multiverse hypothesis; each of us will have numerous “dopplegangers” in other universes since there is a finite number of DNA combinations [in Kraay (2015): 36]. But perhaps we should distinguish between one’s DNA profile and one’s personal identity.

  21. Turner (2003): 156.

  22. Turner prefers Molinism, but Molinism conflicts with classical theism by positing counterfactuals of freedom (CFs) that are not created by, nor dependent on, God. Moreover, CFs are not dependent on the actual choices of actual agents, yet agents must choose in accord with the CF. Thus Molinism conflicts with versions of libertarianism that hold that a free choice is up to the agent alone; Rogers (2015): 109–117.

  23. Rogers (2015): 110–112.

  24. Timothy O’Connor and Philip Woodward, “Incarnation and the Multiverse,” in Kraay (2015): 227–241.

  25. Don N. Page writes, “…if there are no sentient experiences, there is really no value at all” [In Kraay (2015): 51]. See also Jason Megill, “Evil and the many universes response,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 70 (2011): 127–138, at 133.

  26. For a collection on Heaven, see Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays about Heaven edited by T. Ryan Byerly and Eric J. Silverman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

  27. ST 1. Q.105, art. 5.

  28. Some theist idealists—Scotus Erigena is an example—hold that there is no absolute distinction between the physical and the non-physical. All is created by God, and God creates by thinking, so it’s all divine ideas. Were Erigena to support a theist multiverse, he would probably hold that all the universes are constituted by divine ideas. He does not deny the physical, but rather the material, thinking of prime matter in Aristotelian terms as unintelligible even to God.

  29. Book XI of Confessions does not make Augustine’s view perfectly clear, but he definitely says that time is created with the creation of our world.

  30. Rogers (2008): 176–184.

  31. On the Literal Meaning of Genesis 1.9.

  32. Megill (2011): 137.

  33. Klaas Kraay, “Megill’s multiverse meta-argument,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 73 (2013): 235–241.

  34. Kraay (2013): 238–239.

  35. Derek Parfit, “The puzzle of reality: Why does the universe exist?” in Metaphysics: The big questions edited by P. van Inwagen and D. Zimmerman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998): 418–427, at 423.

  36. Peter Forrest “The problem of evil: two neglected defenses” Sophia 20 (1981): 49–54, at 53; God without the supernatural (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996): 225–227.

  37. Paul Draper, “Cosmic fine-tuning and terrestrial suffering: Parallel problems for naturalism and theism” American Philosophical Quarterly 41 (2004): 311–321, at 319–320.

  38. Kraay (2013): 240.

  39. Augustine Confessions 7.12.

  40. Book IV, Prose 7.

  41. Boethius undermines this at the end of the Consolation when he says that God’s foreknowledge depends upon His knowing what He Himself will cause (Book V, Prose 6).

  42. Rogers (2008). Possibly the early Augustine is a libertarian, though it is debatable. Aquinas probably is not, since he holds that God causes our choices as primary cause, and also that we inevitably choose the option we have previously judged to be best. Nonetheless they ground human evil in human freedom.

  43. On Anselm’s view, though original sin renders human freedom ineffective, grace restores the human agent to the prelapsarian condition vis-à-vis the ability to make morally significant choices—still the ignorance and weakness introduced by sin remain (Rogers (2008): 129–145).

  44. Michael Almeida, “Best Worlds and Multiverses” in Kraay (2015): 149–161.

  45. Robin Collins, “Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Incarnation” in Kraay (2015): 211–226; O’Connor and Woodward in Kraay (2015): 227–241. For Aquinas on multiple Incarnations see ST 3. Q.3.

  46. On the Literal Meaning of Genesis 3.16.

  47. Confessions 7.12 (The books of the platonists are discussed in 7.9) Following the translation by R.S. Pine-Coffin (London: Penguin Books, 1961):148.

  48. William Rowe, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1979): 335–341.

  49. Michael J. Murray, Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) 127–129.

  50. The City of God Book 19, Section 12. Following the translation of William Chase Greene in the Loeb Classical Library edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969).

  51. In his Dialogues on Natural Religion Hume writes that “The whole [natural world] presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children.” Retrieved from Eighteenth Century Collections Online p.126. It is interesting that Hume, who is so influential on modern thought, should find the physical universe so nasty, while Augustine sees it as so good.

  52. This is similar to Hud Hudson’s point that the possibility of the multiverse strengthens the skeptical theist’s response to the problem of evil; “Best Possible World Theodicy,” The Blackwell Companion to the Problem of Evil edited by Justin McBrayer and Daniel Howard-Snyder (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013): 236–250.

  53. William Rowe, Can God be Free? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004): 89.

  54. ST 1, Qs. 19 and 25.

  55. Kraay (2010). Kraay adds that God may not cause the results of indeterministic natural processes, but the classical theist denies this. God is keeping each particle in being, and it is up to Him which slit it goes through. This is entailed by classical divine omnipotence.

  56. Michael Schrynemakers, “Kraay’s Theistic Multiverse,” (Kraay, 2015): 129–148, at 134.

  57. Pruss (2016): 219–225.

  58. Pruss (2016): 213.

  59. On Grace and Free Will.

  60. ST 1, Q.83, art. 1, ad. 3; ST 1, Q. 82, art.3, ad. 2.

  61. On the Fall of the Devil 13 and 14.

  62. Cur Deus Homo 2.10 and 17.

  63. I thank my student, Karl Nozadze, for the suggestion.

  64. It may be possible, though not easy, to reconcile this view with the existence of libertarian free creatures (Rogers (2015): 109–116).

  65. Klaas Kraay, “Theism and Modal Collapse,” American Philosophical Quarterly 48 (2011): 361–372.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy Department, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19716, USA

    Katherin A. Rogers

Authors
  1. Katherin A. Rogers
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katherin A. Rogers.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Rogers, K.A. Classical theism and the multiverse. Int J Philos Relig 88, 23–39 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-019-09731-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-019-09731-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation