Can God Change a Tire?

Not as silly a question as it might seem. Can do doesn't imply will do. Self-limiting Omnipotence.

[Serio-Whimsical Theology]

I God and Humanity

The mere title may lose LUD some subscribers. But easy come, easy go!

First let’s establish that no sacrilege is intended- nor follows. The discussion may be overly academic in places, even tedious to those who don't revel in this kind of nuance and nitpick, but real life significant issues about God and Her/His dealings with Humanity are involved. Can God use intercessionary powers? If so why doesn't God use intercessionary powers more often? Maybe because S/he can’t.

Before starting, let's deal with the pronoun issue. Almost no one anymore conceives of God as a white bearded old male a lá the Sistine Chapel depiction by Michelangelo. But nonetheless we continue to use the male pronouns “He” and “His”. In recent decades there's been an effort to correct things by either resorting to the gender neutral “It” or the gender ambiguous “S/he”. I prefer and will use the latter- Sorry, conservatives! I rule out and won’t use “It” as being inappropriate. We commonly assign personhood to Deity and “It” is more commonly assigned to inanimate objects like refrigerators! One would never refer to one's spouse (as an example) saying, “It wants me to wash the car.” So no “Its” below. I do have a long-standing objection to our assuming singularity to ultimate causes or Deity for that matter. Anselmian monotheism aside, there really is no logical reason Deity cannot be plural. The “S/he” pronoun implies a single referrent. I will use it regardless, but put on the record this objection.

Quibbles, lexical niceties and preliminaries done with we can now get to business!

What a silly question, “Can God change a tire?”. One response is that of course God can since by very definition God is omnipotent and that includes tire changing, wheel alignments, and rotations. Another response would be of course God can, but why should S/he? Humans can do such things themselves and God's intercessionary power is reserved for more consequential matters. Yet a third response is that God by virtue of the Omniscience attribute works in a totally inscrutable manner and thus in principle His/her motivations cannot be descried much less questioned.

There may be more responses, but these three come readily to mind, are not highly technical nor require us here to deploy logical apparatus- so let's look at them ad seriatim!

Omnipotence

The first argument is based on divine Omnipotence. Unquestionably yes, God can change a tire. Definitionally so. Here's the syllogism: If S/he was unable, then S/he would lack omnipotence. A being lacking omnipotence cannot be God. Therefore S/he cannot be God. Obvious.

But let's interrogate the first proposition. The second is trivially true by definition and need not be addressed.

Is it true that omnipotence implies a capacity to do anything (within logical limits)? Not really!!

Now before going further a short note (I promise) on the two types of oughts. The first type are moral oughts. Example: “You really ought to change our flat tire”. The second type are prudential oughts. (N.b. I am using the second in a highly restricted sense that quite deliberately ignores the debate pulling these innocent lambs into the factory of agent interest discourse.) An example might be “You ought to loosen the lugnuts before you jack up the tire." The first is a moral judgement, the second is a procedural judgement. If you don't comply with the first, you are blameworthy; if you don’t comply with the second, you are merely a bit dull (to put it kindly.) In what follows we will be dealing primarily with moral oughts.

Now a second short preliminary note on implicative relations. (I have some Red Bull here if anyone is nodding off by now). Ought implies Can is a very famous implicative relation every first year philosophy major learns in their Ethics class. What it means is that we don't say anyone ought to do something if it is impossible for them to do so. Example: “You ought to travel faster than light.” is an unfair use of a moral ought. We will be talking alot about implicative relations between moral oughts, cans and lastly wills (in the dual senses of intention and in the sense of the future tense of do/does.)

Okay. All preliminaries over, I promise. Red Bull anyone?

If we are talking about the possessor of the Omnipotence attribute as a Person and not just a thing, then doesn't that change our analysis decisively? We have to introduce Will in the sense of intention.

Using Christianity's narrative: It was God’s will that Christ come to Man. It didn't just happen. God had the capacity all along throughout history to send his only Son, but it was an act of will to choose the particular time and place and exercise that unlimited capacity. But what we want to say then is that Omnipotence doesn't imply any action independent of will. Why? Deity can, within its own Omnipotence, self-limit its own freedom of action. It can set restrictions on time, place, and all qualifiers of the action taken. That is an outgrowth of S/he being a Person and not a thing, and secondarily having the capacity to freely choose between options and not bound by some species of superdeterminism.

That God can change my tire doesn't bind God to do so no matter how I pray. Nor should we assume that because of the Omnipotence attribute God can even in principle be able to change my tire or anyone else's. S/he may have priorly foreclosed on that class of actions by self-limiting His/Her powers.

An objection might be posed that surely God would have the ability to rescind that self-limitation and apply intercessionary power. Not if S/he had also priorly foreclosed on any such rescission and any infinite regresses of the same...

If you accept the above than you agree that there are some things God cannot do, despite those things being logically possible to do. Would we still be able to say that such a self-limited being is truly Omnipotent? Maybe prior, but not post? A very interesting question!

But all evidence is that if there is a Deity and that Deity is wholly good and omnipercipient, then that kind of self-limited Deity is precisely the one we actually pray to.

Non Intercession on Small Matters.

The argument here is that God doesn't put self-limits on His/Her powers but declines to use them on those matters S/he considers minor. In other words God doesn't sweat the small stuff- will not come to fix my tire, wash my dishes, or walk my dog. Nor should we expect Him/her to, nor be disappointed if S/he doesn’t. Nor does any theologian I know of argue that God owes us explanations as to why, and the rules around why, such declines to act.

This is not really an argument. It is more of a "that's the way things are" statement posing as a kind of common sense theology.

But it doesn't rise to the level of Theology. It offers no organized conception of divinity nor suggests any way to refute it. In Popperian terms it is unfalsifiable. A take it or leave it theology. I suggest we leave it.

Inscrutability

This is an interesting interpretation of the Omniscience attribute. It states that any action or lack of action whatsoever, stemming from an Omniscient mind must be necessarily unknowable in terms of the reason for it, save for the instance of God providing an explanation. Why?because Omniscience by definition erects an epistemic barrier that cannot be breached by finite minds. God knows things we don't know, can foretell outcomes we cannot see, has knowledge of the workings of Reality we cannot gain. Therefore the whys and wherefores can never be known to us and it is a futile exercise to speculate.

Does this argument hold water? Surprisingly the answer should be Yes. In my opinion this is the strongest of the three arguments discussed. Omnipotence fails on the possibility of self limitation. Non intercessionary decline fails on the fact it really isn't an argument. Inscrutability would be the hardest to argue against, but its conclusion unfortunately still leaves us in the dark. God may or may not be able to change a tire, but we'll never know unless S/he tells us. Otherwise, inscrutability rules.

II Humanity

Less inscrutable are we our fallible selves. We definitely don't have Omnipotence nor Omniscience. And we definitely do sweat the small stuff. I myself can change a tire if I have the proper tools and possess the will to do some work. It's not even in question. But perhaps while I'm certainly eager to fix my tire when stranded on the highway, when I drive by you, likewise stranded on the highway with your flat tire..why, I can’t be bothered! How so? Why don't I always use my intercessionary power, meager as it may be, to provide invariable ungrudging assistance? And this question applies to all of us. What exactly is the matter with us? This is the true mystery: social animals that are anti-social when it comes to rendering needed assistance. What’s wrong with us? Don't say it's a matter of upbringing or cultural values. I don't imagine hardly anyone on the planet is universally altruistic and compassionate. Out of 8 billion maybe only a few hundred at best. Why is this discouragingly so? What's the matter with us? Our philosophy reached its limits here and we probably ought to pass the hot potato over to the social and biological sciences.

What sense of “ought” was just used? Moral? Prudential? Indeterminable?

Philosophy is capital fun- admit it! [crickets] Red Bull anyone???