Philosophy of Religion 29: 33-52, 1991. �9 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

How can we speak of God? How can we speak of anything*

PETER FORREST

Department of Philosophy, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia

How can we speak of God? It is tempting to dismiss the problem implicit

in this question. Positivists saw a problem, to be sure. But a child of six has more understanding than positivists admit to. God, we might say, is a

person who, unlike us, is not limited in power, knowledge or goodness. There is no problem speaking of such a God. The problem of how we can speak of God, arises, however, within almost every theistic religion. The

combination of collective experience and collective reflection, which shape religions, drives us to the claim that God is beyond our comprehen-

sion, in that (1) S/He shares no properties with us. As regards shared properties, S/He is less like a human being than a human being is like a

speck of dust. Furthermore, there is a tradition which goes on to say that

God is simple, in the sense that (2) S/He lacks any distinction of parts or of properties. 1 How can we speak of such a God? Here indeed is a problem.

First let me make it quite clear that my aim is to show how we can talk of a God such tha t ( l ) and (2). This need not be a totally incomprehensible God. 2

As the title of my paper indicates, all language is profoundly puzzling. Any discussion of how we can speak of God should be against a

background of wonder at our ability to speak of anything. Here I note how

often an intellectual problem is seen as a difficulty for Christianity, or some other religion, when in fact it is a general philosophical problem. Let

* I read a paper with this title to a Philosophy and Theology Conference in Manly, February 1988, and again to the Philosophy Seminar at the University of New England. I am grateful to all who participated in the discussion on those two occasions, and to Barry Miller who provided helpful comments on more than one draft.

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me give this a name. I call it the Special Problem Fallacy - treating a general philosophical problem as if it were confined to one area. An example is the common intellectual squeamishness about miracles among many Christians. The following combination of beliefs is quite prevalent:

(i) God cannot intervene to affect the physical order, as in the literal resurrection of Jesus from the dead. (ii) Nonetheless the word of God indirectly affects the physical order because it alters our behaviour.

Here there is implicit acceptance of our own freedom to affect the physical

order, combined with puzzlement as to how God can. But if we can work that trick, then is it so surprising that an, if I may say so, more powerful

agent can? If we are to avoid the Special Problem Fallacy when discussing the

problem of how we can talk of an incomprehensible God, then our

discussion must be one which takes into consideration the current debate over how we use language. I shall concentrate on just one part of lan-

guage, namely general terms. There may also be problems with our use of modal operators such as 'necessarily' when we talk of God. But I doubt if

they are any more difficult than those raised by the application to God of general terms, such as 'merciful.' So I shall concentrate on the task of

showing how it is possible that we (i) apply various general terms to God,

without (ii) knowing how we dO so. Notice that this is an answer to a

'How is it possible?' question. So my aim is to exhibit a way in which it could occur. I am not claiming to have discovered the only way in which it

could occur. If you can think of other ways, so much the better. My discussion will have four parts. In the first part, I distinguish

between two kinds of general term, the phenomenal~rational terms, on the one hand, and natural class terms, on the other. I shall then argue that not all general terms are phenomenal/rational ones. 3 For natural class terms,

we may make a Lockean distinction between real and nominal essences. The application of the Lockean distinction to our talk about God is obvious. We can talk about God because we know Her/His nominal

essence; God is incomprehensible because we have no knowledge of Her/His real essence. In the second part of my discussion, I defend this

account from the objection that naturalness is subjective. In the third part, I defend the account from the objection that God is incomprehensible in a

special way, whereas, it is said, on my account other things might turn out

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to be just as incomprehensible. This defense is by means of a modification to my initial account, a modification which, in addition, enables me to defend the Simplicity of God. Finally, in the fourth part, I turn to various further accounts of naturalness, examining the implications of these for our discourse concerning God.

This is an appropriate place to note that I shall be discussing terms, that is, predicates incapable of further analysis into simpler predicates. In no way do I exclude the obvious and preliminary account, in which a predi- cate such as 'holy and loving' applies to God because both 'holy' and ' loving' apply.

Things appear to us as having certain qualities, with which certain general terms are correlated. 4 A (non-relational) phenomenal term applies to whatever has the quality correlated with that term. So, for example, the term 'red' applies to whatever has the (not fully determinate) property which the things we usually call red appear to have. If in fact nothing at all has that property, then there are no red items. If, as could be the case, the things we usually "~11 red appear diferently to different people, then the term 'red' has a different meaning as used by different people. Suppose that there was just one person to whom things usually called red appear as they really are. Then the term 'red' as used by that person does apply to various objects, but the term 'red' as used by the rest of us would not. All these assertions, which might be thought dogmatic, are, I submit, conse- quences of my claim that 'red' is a phenomenal term. The term is corre- lated in the learning process with a phenomenal quality, which things may or may not actually have. And likewise for phenomenal relations. For example, things appear to be related by adjacency. And the term 'adjacent' applies to any pair of objects which are actually related the way apparently adjacent objects appear to be related. So perhaps there are no adjacent objects.

In addition to the phenomenal general terms, there might be what I cal l rational terms. These would not correspond to phenomenal properties so much as to certain properties which we (innately) tend to assume are had by various items, which are themselves experienced in a quite normal fashion. Suppose, for example, that the causal relation is not perceivable. Then the term 'causes' might be a rational general term. We learn to apply

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it to a certain relation which we assume holds between various items where one is said to cause the other. If this assumption should turn out to be false, as I believe it would on a Humean account of causation, then

nothing would cause anything. Once again, I may sound dogmatic, but all I am doing is unpacking the assertion that 'causes' is a rational term. Empiricists would deny that it or any other term was a rational one.

We can understand why a phenomenal term applies as it does. For we know the way objects have to be if the term is to apply. And, although this

is more problematic, we may well have a similar understanding when it comes to any rational terms which there are. One source of the widespread conviction that there is an insoluble problem in talking of God, is the unwarranted assumption that all predicates are analysable into phenomenal/rational terms. But not all terms are phenomenal or rational.

(Indeed some would say none are.) In addition, there are natural kind terms for which, as Putnam puts it, 'meaning ain't in the head. '5 A typical

natural kind term is 'water.' To bring out the contrast, let us stipulate that

the phrase 'water-like stuff' applies to anything with most of the

phenomenal properties we associate with water, such as being a liquid, and being transparent. Putnam asks us to envisage a planet, Twin Earth, on

which the water-like stuff is not H20, but has some other composition

XYZ. Then our term 'water' does not apply to the water-like stuff on that planet. Conversely, we would not object if scientific experiments were said to show that water at extreme pressure had none of the phenomenal

properties associated with water. (Perhaps it is a black metallic substance.)

This is because 'water' applies to a kind of stuff, which we have learnt to

correlate with the word 'water.' As a corrollary, it is conceivable that none of the phenomenal qualities associated with water ever belong to it. In that

case, there would be no water-like stuff, but plenty of water. The argument

that there are some kind terms is based on our linguistic intuitions, such as

those concerning the waterless Twin Earth, and the black metallic water

under pressure. Notice that a natural kind word will often have a secondary phenomenal

sense, in which it applies to something with most of the properties which typical specimens of the kind appear to have. In this secondary sense, the word 'water' is equivalent to 'water-like stuff.' Conversely, a phenomenal

or rational term could be used in a secondary sense as a kind term, to

apply to the kind of things which typically appear a certain way. For example let us use the predicate 'k-black' to apply to the kind of thing which typically appears black. 6 Then 'black' is used in a secondary sense

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as equivalent to 'k-black.' And much the same holds for rational terms. If, as I hold, 'causes' is a rational term, and if a Humean account is correct,

then while there is no causation, there are plenty of instances of k-causa- tion, namely those situations for which the Humean constant conjunction

analysis is correct.

For natural kind terms, we may distinguish between real and nominal essences. The real essence is what the members of the kind have in common. 7 The nominal essence is just a verbal description of the form: the kind of thing typical members of which appear thus. For example, the real essence of water is to be H20. Its nominal essence is to be the kind of stuff which typically appears to be water-like. And, for many years people used the term 'water' correctly, without understanding the real essence of water.

How, then, can we talk of an incomprehensible God? I now sketch an answer - the details will take up the rest of the paper. We can talk of an

incomprehensible God provided we avoid phenomenal or rational terms,

in their primary senses, when talking of God. We can do so, because it is a peculiar characteristic of phenomenal and, perhaps, rational terms that we

can understand how they apply. As natural kind terms show, that charac-

teristic is not one had by all general terms. Does it follow, then, that the terms used of God are natural kind terms? To decide this, let us consider a

specific example, namely the mercifulness of God. Suppose, as is

plausible enough, that 'merciful' is a rational term. Then it does not apply

to an incomprehensible God in its primary sense. Is it equivalent to 'k- merciful' then? Not quite. For suppose that the people who appear

merciful were not as they seem. Suppose, to be more precise, that all apparently merciful people were hypocrites, who used the pretence of

mercy to inflict psychological suffering on those to whom they had been "merciful." Then 'k-merciful' would in fact apply to a certain kind of

hypocrite, and the real essence of k-mercifulness would be a certain sort of hypocrisy. But in that case God would not be k-merciful. This is because 'k-merciful' is a natural kind term, and we could be totally mistaken about

the real essences of kinds. Yet surely we know enough about God to know

that S/He would be merciful even if every "merciful" human person was a hypocrite.

Natural kind terms are not, then, quite what we need to talk of God. But their existence is important for two reasons. First, they demonstrate that

not all terms are phenomenal/rational. Secondly, they bring to our atten- tion the natural/artificial distinction. 8 For a class of things constitutes a

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kind only if it is sufficiently natural... Otherwise, why should not the

class consisting of all specimens of 1-120 together with all specimens of XYZ count as a kind? Or, for that matter, why should not any collection of items, however disparate, which happens to include all the specimens of

water we are familiar with, count as a kind? If it did, then the use of the

term 'water' would be grossly under-determined by the fact that it applies to members of the same kind as the familiar examples of water. We should, therefore, accept the Inegalitarian Theory of Classes, as Lewis calls it, 9 namely the thesis that there is an objective distinction underlying the intuitive judgement that some classes are natural (or have a unity) and

others are artificial. For an example of such a judgement consider the class consisting of the last ten cups of tea I drank while writing this paper, the galaxy in Andromeda, all the pi-mesons now within a million kilometres

of the star Tau Ceil, and Socrates' last words. We can form such a class.

But it is intuitively a collection without any naturalness or unity. Accordingly, I do not contrast the phenomenal/rational terms with kind

terms, so much as with what I call natural class terms, which include kind

terms as a proper subset. Natural class terms are terms which apply to a suitably natural class .... where some phrase fills in the dots. 1~ If the dots

are filled in with the phrase 'which contains these, but does not contain

those' where we point to various objects, then, indeed, the term is a natural kind term. 11 However, there are other natural class terms, as I shall now

argue. Or, at least, there are general terms which could be used as natural class terms which are not kind terms. For I shall exhibit a possible ex-

tended use of general terms. I shall then be able to show a possible way of talking of a simple, incomprehensible God. I happen to make the further

claim that this extended use is commonplace. But it would be too great a digression to demonstrate this further claim.

Suppose we have a term X, which in its primary sense applies only to

things which are of kind K. Then we may extend it to apply more widely in contexts in which we are clearly not talking about a member of K. Call

this extended term ext-X. Then, I suggest, ext-X applies to some natural class of items which is not contained in K, and which includes all the things of kind K to which X applies and excludes all things of kind K to which X does not apply. If there is no such natural class then the extended sense is vacuous and fails to apply to any things outside K. If there is more than one such class, then the extended sense is either specified by further contextual cues 12 or is under-determined. In the latter case, the assertion

that a is ext-X is equivalent to saying that there is some natural class which

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contains a, which contains everything in K to which X applies, and which

excludes everything in K to which X fails to apply. This extended use of general terms is a plausible enough account of the historical extension of a term. Consider English spoken before the rise of modem zoology. Let us suppose that the term 'bird' was restricted to a certain kind of flying animal (birds would have been contrasted with bats). In that case, its application to large flightless animals such as Emus might well have been

an extension of this kind. Subsequently zoologists would have provided a

more precise characterisation of birds. The point of this example is not to conjecture about the actual history of the extension of terms, but to

illustrate a possible way of extending them. I shall now apply this to talk about God, in order to show a possible way of talking of a simple, incom- prehensible God.

To say God is merciful in this extended sense (i.e. to say that God is ext-merciful) is to say at least that there is a natural class which contains

God, all (possible) merciful human persons and excludes all (possible) human persons who are not merciful. 13 Therefore we understand why 'ext-

merciful' applies to some human persons. That is because they are

merciful. But we do not comprehend the real essence of ext-mercifulness.

To do so, we would have to understand what it is about God which puts

Her/Him in the natural class in question. In this respect, then, such natural

class terms are intermediate between phenomenal/rational terms and natural kind terms.

Much the same holds for the dyadic term 'causes.' I assume we are considering agency causation. So I shall take 'causes' to be elliptical for

'is an agent who causes.' If this is either phenomenal or rational, then it

does not apply in its primary sense to the pair consisting of God and

Creation. But 'ext-causes' does. That pair belongs to a natural class which

contains all instances of agency causation and excludes all pairs which are

of the appropriate kind for ordinary agency-causation but are not causally related.

The thesis that we can speak of God because we apply terms which are

extended in the above fashion is one which I shall call the Direct Natural-

ness Thesis. Later I shall consider a variant, which I call the Indirect Naturalness Thesis.

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II

The obvious objection to the Direct Naturalness Thesis is that it relies on an objective natural/artificial distinction. Some classes are more natural than others quite independently of our beliefs, attitudes and social prac- tices. This assertion of objectivity goes against the intellectual trend. Nonetheless I claim it is irrational not to accept the objectivity of that distinction. For, as I have already pointed out, otherwise all predicates not

analysable into phenomenal or rational ones would be so grossly under- determined as to be meaningless. And here I follow David Lewis, 14 except

that he, unlike me, is not going to make exceptions for phenomenal or rational terms.

In greater detail, the argument for objective naturalness has as a premiss

the claim that natural kind terms such as 'water' are not grossly under- determined. So there is a limited, though perhaps fuzzy, class of correct

interpretations of our general terms. Each interpretation assigns to general

terms the class of things to which, on that interpretation, the term applies.

For instance, a given interpretation assigns to the term 'water' the class of things which count as (regions of) water according to that interpretation. For each correct interpretation we can construct in many ways various

intuitively incorrect re-interpretations. Since our concern here is with kind-terms, we shall suppose that the re-interpretation assigns intuitively

correct classes to the phenomenal/rational terms. However, the re-inter- pretation assigns intuitively incorrect classes to kind-terms. For instance, suppose U is some region which includes everything sufficiently near the

Earth - say within a million light-years. Then the re-interpretation could assign to various kind-terms only classes of items inside U. Thus it assigns to the term 'water' only what is, intuitively, water in U. I assume that such

re-interpretations are indeed incorrect. But what constraint do they

violate? It is tempting to say that our intentions are violated. But what inten-

tions? The intention that 'water' applies to water is not violated, however

we interpret 'water.' Nor is our intention that 'water' applies to that stuff (said when pointing to some water). For what we point to is inside U. Is it, as Putnam seems to suggest, the intention that our best theory turns out to be true? There are two objections to that suggestion. The first is that

according to an ideal theory there will be some region U such that the ideal theory will not tell us whether or not there is water outside U, even though in fact there is. So this intention would not exclude the re-inter-

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pretation mentioned above. Putnam would concede this, but would reject

the intuition that there is a fact of the matter as to whether there is water outside U. Hence I turn to the second objection. I deny that we intend what we say to be interpreted so as to make it true. Rather, in normal contexts we intend what we say to be interpreted so as to make it a sensible thing to say in the context, 15 And I fail to see why our intentions should be any

different when it comes to the interpretation of an ideal theory. For example, consider an uncontroversial under-determination in our use of

the term 'water.' That stuff (said pointing to a typical specimen) is a mixture of ordinary and heavy water. Is pure heavy water water? Is it still water if the hydrogen isotope is the radio-active tritium? As far as I can

see this is an uncontroversial under-determination. Now suppose I look at a row of bottles labelled poison, and I say: 'There is no water here.' In fact, one of the bottles contains heavy water. Perhaps the context deter- mines what I meant. For instance it might be clear that I meant drinkable water. But if it were just a remark I made for no obvious reason, then there

would be no such determination. Should what I say be interpreted to make

it true? Surely not. As I intended it the remark remains under-determined.

It is neither true nor false. By contrast, if I had said 'There is plenty of

heavy water here, but no water,' clearly I intend my remark to be inter-

preted as a sensible one. And to ensure that, water would have to exclude heavy water.

There is a non-trivial problem, then, concerning what constraints are

violated by intuitively incorrect interpretations of kind terms. The only solution would seem to be that not all classes of items are as eligible as others when it comes to the application of terms. What is wrong with the

re-interpretations is that they assign the wrong sort of classes to various terms. Let us call the fight sort the natural ones, leaving it as a further

problem to decide what constitutes naturalness. We are led then to Lewis'

solution to Putnam's Paradox - at least if we restrict our attention to kind terms. As a corollary, the natural/artificial distinction must be independent

of our beliefs attitudes and practices. For the intuition I relied on was that

there might well be water outside the region G. And this, I assume, is not

itself dependent on beliefs, attitudes or practices.

In the above, I relied quite heavily on intuitions which are sometimes rejected. Perhaps this could be taken as an objection. If so, I have two replies. The first is to remind the reader of the Special Problem Fallacy. There was said to be a special problem in talking of an incomprehensible

God. I have argued that we can solve that problem by relying on certain

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intuitions concerning kind terms such as water. These intuitions are nothing directly to do with Theism, mad are quite widespread among atheists. Therefore, there is no special problem for theists. My second reply is to recall my overall purpose. It is to explain how it is possible to

talk of an incomprehensible God. This is in response to a problem which arises within a tradition which stresses the transcendence of God. In the

context of that tradition it seems quite proper to rely on intuitions which

reflect a belief in a reality transcending our beliefs, attitudes and practices.

I l l

The other objection which I anticipate is that, while I have shown we can talk of God, I have sacrificed the incomprehensibility of God. It will be

objected that if God belongs to the same natural class as, say, merciful human beings, then we do partially understand God. For we have the same

understanding of God as we had of water before scientists discovered that

water is HzO. To be sure, there would be the difference that we can never understand God the way we now understand water. But surely, it is objected, God is incomprehensible in a way that water never was.

This is an important objection. It shows that the Direct Naturalness

Thesis has not gone far enough in defending the incomprehensibility of

God. Accordingly, I propose the Indirect Naturalness thesis. It will enable

us to defend the thesis of Divine Simplicity in such a way that many non-

synonomous things are truly said of a simple God. And there will not be

any material objects which will be simple in this sense. So we shall have defended a traditional characteristic of God which, I submit, entails that God is incomprehensible in a strong sense. However, I concede some-

thing. I am committed to two qualifications to the incomprehensibility of God, neither of which is inconsistent with Divine Simplicity. Consider the

category consisting of all things which are members of those natural classes which also include familiar items such as human beings. A priori, we have no reason to insist that everything must belong to that category. My first qualification is that God does belong to that category. (Afortiori God is the sort of thing which can belong to a natural class.) My second qualification is that God is the sort of thing which belongs to our most basic categories, such as substance and property. 16

To state the Indirect Naturalness Thesis I need some Analytic Ontol- ogy. Things, I shall assume, typically have many different properties. And

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they stand in various different relations. Are these properties and relations

universals or particulars? We do not have to decide. It suffices that there are properties and relations. We may now modify our account of natural class terms as applied to familiar objects. Instead of saying that a one-

place natural class term applies to the members of some specified natural class, we say that it applies to anything which has a property in some specified natural class. And for many-place terms, we say they apply to various objects, in a given order, just in case those objects are related, in that order, by a relation which is in the natural class in question. In short, we rely on natural classes of properties, rather than natural classes of

objects.

This is not the place to discuss the advantages of this modification, apart from its ability to preserve the incomprehensibility of God. It

suffices to say that it is a quite tenable speculation in its own right. But how does it apply in the case of God? Let us explicate Divine Simplicity by saying that God has a single property - the Divine Nature - and that

God is identical to the Divine Nature. In that case God belongs both to the category of substance and the category of property. 17 Now consider the

application of, say, 'merciful.' We are first to consider human mercy. On one speculation there is a property of mercifulness for each merciful

human. On another there is just the one property. On yet another there are various different ways a human can be merciful, and we have that number

of different properties. But, one way or another, we have a class of

properties of mercifulness. This is a natural class. The claim is that God belongs to another natural class containing these properties and excluding any properties there may be of unmercifulness. 18 And it is in virtue of

belonging to this class that the term 'merciful' applies to God. Notice that God is in the class along with various properties. But this is as much to be

expected as that God should be in a class along with various substances.

For, God, we are assuming, is both property and substance.

We now have a way of combining the thesis of the Divine Simplicity

with an account of the extended use of various terms which enables some,

but not others, to apply to God. In this connection, notice that these terms, although extended, are still being used in a fact-stating fashion, and have a

truth-conditional semantics. They are not being used in some 'poetic' fashion to draw our attention to what cannot be asserted.

It should also be noted that, on the Indirect Naturalness Thesis there is

more to the incomprehensibility of God than an inability to discover Her/His real essence. We could have that sort of inability even if various

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terms applied to God in the same way they applied to other things. But on the account I have given, terms apply to God and other things in radically different ways. They apply to other things indirectly, via their properties; they apply to God directly, for God is a property.

In this section, I have discussed only the application of one-place terms to God. What are we to say of the extended use of such terms as 'causes' or ' loves'? If the usual substance/property distinction is inapplicable to God, because God is identical to Her/His nature, then, I doubt if we should posit relations between God and other things. 19 HOW then do many-place terms apply to God? Only, I submit, because some one-place term applies (in a suitably extended sense) of God. For instance, in the case of humans we may be able to distinguish love from any inner state. There is a sense in which a loving disposition which finds no expression is not real love. But for God there is no obstacle to the expression of love. So when we say God loves us, the relational predicate 'loves human beings' applies to God because (i) the non-relational predicate 'has a loving disposition' applies and (ii) the predicate 'is all-powerful' applies.

Again, in the human case, there is a gap between intending to do something and actually bringing it about. But there is no such gap for God. So the relational predicate 'causes the world to exist' applies to God because (i) the non-relational predicate 'intends there to be a world of such and such a kind' applies, in an extended sense, and (ii) 'is all-powerful' applies. Yet again, the relational predicate 'knows that P ' applies to God because (i) the non-relational predicate 'believes that P ' applies, in a suitably extended sense, and (ii) 'is all-knowing' applies.

How then do the predicates 'is all-knowing' and 'is all-powerful ' apply? I am in no position to give a relational analysis of these predicates. Rather, I interpret 'God is all-knowing' to mean 'For all P such that it could coherently be supposed both that P and that God believes that P, S/He believes P just in case P is true.' Admittedly, this would hold of a being who always guessed and by sheer luck always guessed correctly. But that is no objection. For not merely is God all-knowing, necessarily S/He is all-knowing. The modality excludes the case of "lucky omnis- cience." Likewise I interpret 'God is all-powerful' to mean 'For all P, if God has the intention that P be the case, then P is the case.' And, once again, the apparent weakness of this claim is compensated for by the requirement that God is necessarily all-powerful.

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IV

My account of our ability to talk of an incomprehensible God relied on an objective natural/artificial distinction, for which I argued. But this distinc- tion is not beyond further discussion. So I now ask what makes some

classes more natural than others. Or, to put it another way, what gives some classes a unity which others lack? If we can give no answer, then we

should rest content with the above discussion. But if we can give a further

account of an objective natural/artificial distinction, then we should consider what effect this has on how we can talk of God. I shall begin this

section, then, b y surveying some theories of naturalness. Then I shall discuss the effect these various accounts have on the discussion of the previous section. It turns out that, in different ways, these further accounts undercut my earlier claims. Therefore, I conclude this paper by arguing

that no further theory of naturalness has the completeness it would have to have if it were to be used to criticise the discussion of the previous section.

Throughout this section I assume the Indirect Naturalness Thesis.

Let me begin by reminding the reader of what these accounts of naturalness are intended to explicate. We have an intuitive grasp of the

distinction between a natural and an artificial collection of items. The

Inegalitarian Theory of Classes is that this is an objective distinction which we are able to judge with some, but not total, reliability.

The simplest theory of the naturalness of classes is to insist that a class

of properties or relations is natural just in case it has only a single mem- ber. 2~ On this theory a natural class term would apply to all the things

which had some specified property, or to all the pairs which stood in some specified relation, where the property or relation would be a universal. 21

Let us call this the Single Universal Theory of Natural Classes.

A more complicated theory of naturalness is to allow further principles

governing the naturalness of classes of properties, in addition to the principle that a Singleton, that is a set with only one member, is always a

natural class. One such principle is that the class of all the instances of all the members of some natural class of properties is itself a natural class. 22

Hence, if we allow grand-properties (i.e. properties of properties), and if

we assume that they are universals, then all the properties which share a given grand-property form a natural class.

If properties can provide the unity of a natural class, then why should not relations? But they would do so in a different fashion. Given any

relation R and any item a related by R to something (either itself or some

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other item), we can define recursively a sequnece of sets, S1, 52, etc, where

S I contains only a, and where Sn§ 1 contains everything related to S n by either R or its converse. Then I call the union of the Sk, for all k, the set generated by R from a. We may now propose a third principle of natural-

ness, namely that the union of all the sets generated by members of a natural class of relations, from members of a natural class, is itself (fairly) natural. 23 Perhaps there are more such principles of naturalness which

could be stated. But I shall call any theory of naturalness which relies on principles such as the above, a variant of the Structural Theory of Natural- ness.

A rather different theory of naturalness is the Similarity Theory. This

takes similarity to be objective and unanalysable. Then a set is natural if its members are more similar to each other than they are to non-members. And the greater the degree of similarity, the more natural the class.

We have, then, three representative theories of naturalness, in addition

to the claim that naturalness is unanalysable. They are the Single Univer-

sal Theory, The Structural Theory, and the Similarity Theory. On the Single Universal Theory, a natural class term applies to all and

only the instances of some universal. Let us see how this would affect the

application of say 'merciful' to God. This term, we are to suppose, applies

to merciful humans because they are instances of a universal, call it human mercifulness which things have which are merciful in the human fashion.

But, since 'merciful' in its extended sense applies to God and to human

beings, they must all be instances of some universal, call it generic mercifulness. And the two universals cannot be identical. For God is, we are assuming, not merciful in quite the human fashion. Human merciful-

ness would entail generic mercifulness, but not vice versa. Are we to say,

then, that human mercifulness is the conjunction of generic mercifulness

and some other universal? Perhaps. But we might instead say that human mercifulness is a determinate of generic mercifulness, just as crimson is a determinate of red, and red, in its turn, is a determinate of color. 24 In either

case, the incomprehensibility of God is preserved by insisting that the terms which apply to God correspond to universals which are, in one way

or another, less specific than another universal which corresponds to the

non-extended use of the term. We cannot, however, retain Divine Simplicity if we rely on the Single

Universal Theory of Naturalness. For consider the two different virtues of wisdom and mercifulness. God has both in an extended sense. So generic wisdom and generic mercifulness will both have God as an instance, or,

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rather, both be identical to God. It follows that if God is simple, then

generic mercifulness is identical to generic wisdom. But a humanly merciful person has generic mercifulness, and hence would have generic wisdom and so not be foolish. But that is absurd. There can be merciful

fools. This absurdity results from the combination of the thesis of Divine Simplicity with the Single Universal Theory of Naturalness.

The Structural Theory tells us that there are ways in which a class of

properties can be natural in addition to being a singleton. This might provide us with alternatives to the account sketched above. First, let us

ignore Divine Simplicity and allow that, perhaps, God has several dif- ferent properties. And let us consider mercifulness again. We could now

posit many different properties of human mercifulness which form a natural class because they all share a further universal property, or because

they are related. If this property also holds of some property of God, or if this relation also relates some property of God to the various properties of human mercifulness, then there is an appropriate natural classes which enables 'merciful' to apply in an extended sense to God. 25

Can we preserve Divine Simplicity on the Structural Theory? Let us

now assume that God is not the sort of thing to be distinguished from any

property or relation which S/He might have. And suppose a class containing God and various human properties is a natural one. Are we to

say that S/He is related to these properties? Or are we to say that S/He and they share a common property? Neither could be correct. For both of those

require God to be distinct from some property of God or some relation which S/He enters into.

Perhaps I have been too swift, though. For once we admit three prin-

ciples governing naturalness we have no reason to exclude others in the same spirit. Here is a suggestion worth investigating. Even if in God there is no distinction between properties and substance, God and various

properties might form a natural class because God stands to those properties as property to substance. God would thus be a grand-property,

but one capable of self-instantiation. However, even on this, somewhat

exotic, speculation we cannot reconcile Divine Simplicity with there being many non-synonomous things said of God. For on the proposed account there would b e nothing natural about the class which includes all the

properties of human mercifulness, and includes God, but excludes the property of human wisdom. For if the criterion for inclusion is having God as a property, then we would have to include the properties of human wisdom as well. As far as I can tell, then, we should abandon Divine

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Simplicity on both the Single Universal and the Structural Theory. On the Similarity Theory of Naturalness God is said to be merciful

because S/lie is similar to human mercifulness. 26 Likewise God is said to be just because S/He is similar to human justice. Divine Simplicity is preserved provided there is at most one human property which is similar to God to a high degree. 27 It would be interesting to speculate what that one property, if there is one, might be. But since my project is the explication of Divine Incomprehensibility, perhaps we should deny that there is any such property.

There is a serious problem with any reliance on a straightforward Similarity Theory if it is proposed as an account of how we can talk of an incomprehensible God. It is that on it the degree of similarity would, presumably, determine the degree of naturalness of the class. (If not, what does?) But if the classes are not very natural then our talk of God is too loose. So our ability to talk meaningfully of God seems to depend on the degree of similarity. Likewise the higher the degree of similarity between the Divine and the human, the more we could be said to comprehend what God is like. Hence we have not broken the nexus between meaningful speech and comprehension. All we have done is to compromise between them in such a way as to preserve Divine Simplicity.

We can, however, sophisticate the Similarity Theory to give a half- satisfactory solution to this problem. Instead of saying that God is similar to human mercifulness, let us say that God is similar to generic merciful- ness (mentioned when discussing the Single Universal Theory). Then we can rely on our inability to grasp mercifulness outside the human context

in order to increase the incomprehensibility of God, while still retaining a fair degree 28 of similarity between God and human mercifulness. The naturalness of the class containing all instances of human mercifulness, on the one hand, and God, on the other, would not be hopelessly low. Nonetheless, this solution is not entirely satisfactory. Surely, except where the language is recognisably figurative, talk of God should be as tight as

any other discourse. Hence the classes involved should typically be as natural as those for natural kind terms. 29 I conclude that the Similarity

Theory is unsuccessful. Of our further accounts of naturalness, then, the Single Universal

Theory, while it preserved the Divine Incomprehensibility did not preserve Divine Simplicity. The Structural Theory was no improvement. The Similarity Theory preserved Divine Simplicity but at the cost of an unacceptable loosening of discourse about God. Thus the further accounts

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of naturalness seem to undercut my previous discussion. This could be taken as an objection to my claim that we can talk meaningfully of an incomprehensible and simple God. To meet this objection, I complete my paper with a case for not relying on any further theory of naturalness. But, before I do so, let me note that those further theories differed in the ways they undercut my discussion. So I do not think they point to a more general problem.

First, while the Single Universal Theory is a good account of the highest degree of naturalness (or unity), it ignores the possibility of lower degrees. 3~ We have good reason to believe that few if any of our non- technical terms correspond to classes with the highest degree of natural- ness. Thus if ordinary water is a mixture of mostly light with a little heavy water, specimens of water do not form a class with the highest degree of naturalness. So we may reject the Single Universal Theory.

This leads to the Structural Theory, which allows all manner of varia- tion. Its defect is that it allows several different principles governing naturalness. Now, naturalness cannot per form its theoretical role in semantics if it is itself disjunctive. So there must be some further charac- teristic, naturalness itself, which these different principles govern. They do not, by themselves, constitute naturalness. (The situation here is similar to that which occurs in the theory of deductively valid inferences. The multiplicity of principles governing deductive validity ensures that deductive validity is not just a matter of reasoning in accordance with those principles, but is something else which those principles are about.) It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that there may well be further ways of being natural of which we know nothing. This is not a reason for rejecting the Structural Theory, but for denying its completeness. Hence we have a reason for not relying on it in order to criticise Divine Simplicity. Quite generally, while we may continue to speculate about the nature of the natural, we should not rely on such speculations when applying the natural/artificial distinction.

Finally, I think we should reject the Similarity Theory of naturalness. First, I claim that either similarity is restricted to appearances, or it is analysable as the having of features in common. For consider such non- phenomenal cases as the similarity between various kinds of numbers, the similarity between different examples of causation, or the similarity between the structures of the gases Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton and Radon. Such similarities are intuitively just a matter of there being various features or characteristics in common. But what is it to have these fea-

50

tures? Regardless of any further analysis, to have a feature or characteris-

tic must be to belong to some natural classes. So I conclude that in the

non-phenomenal cases, two items are similar to the extent that they belong

to most o f the same natural classes. If I am fight about the compulsory

character of this analysis, then the attempt to analyse naturalness in terms

of similarity will be circular or otherwise untenable. 31 I infer that while

similarity may play a role in the semantics of phenomenal terms it is not

suited to an account o f naturalness.

I conclude that none of the proposed theories of naturalness has the sort

of completeness required if they are to be used to criticise my previous

discussion.

Notes

1. For a critique of the claim that a perfect being must be simple, see Thomas V. Morris 'Dependence and divine simplicity,' International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 23 (1988): 161-174. This raises the question of why we should take seriously the thesis of the simplicity of God. I suspect this thesis arises, at least in part, from a critical reflection of the experience of God. But my use of the thesis is to show how even if God were as incom- prehensible as such a simple being would have to be we can still talk coherently of God.

2. The God of whom we can talk even though (1) and (2) hold could be called the God of the theologians. There is a further problem posed by claims to have experienced that which is ineffable. But that is beyond the scope of this paper.

3. It will not be of much significance if ii is denied that there are any phenomenal/rational terms.

4. I am using the term 'appears' so as not to exclude something's actually being as it appears.

5. Here I am not concerned with biological kinds, which may be partly charac- terised in terms of ancestry, but natural kinds such as water or iron.

6. If there is no single kind of thing which typically appears a certain way, then the secondary sense of a phenomenal term will apply to items from any of the kinds which typically appear that way. This might well be the case with the secondary use of many colour terms.

7. This need not be the conjunction of individually necessary and jointly sufficient simple characteristics. A real essence could be a messy matter of family resemblance. However, if it gets too messy, we would say there was more than one kind.

8. Or, better, the distinction of degrees of naturalness. This distinction has recently been championed by David Lewis. Seei'New Work for a Theory of

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Universals,' Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (Dec. 1983): 343-377. I refer the reader to this paper for an account of the natural/artificial distinc- tion.

9. This judgement is assumed to be on the whole reliable without being infallible.

10. An alternative would be to insist that the term applies to the most natural class ... By considering a suitably natural class instead, I introduce some harmless under-determination. This is in agreement with my linguistic intuitions. But nothing depends on this point.

11. Provided there is a suitably natural class containing these but not containing those.

12. For example, if we clearly intend to distinguish ext-X from ext-Y, then this intention is a further constraint.

13. We may need to consider possible members of K in case the term in its non- extended sense fails to apply.

14. See especially David Lewis, 'Putnam's Paradox,' Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (1984): 221-236,

15. This is the Principle of Charity, which has been much discussed in recent literature.

16. This may turn out to be an unnecessary qualification. An alternative is to insist that 'substance' and 'property' themselves apply in an extended sense to God. This raises some difficult problems concerning circularity, which I would rather avoid.

17. How can this be? Consider the various attempts to treat ordinary objects as themselves just "bundles" of properties. One standard objection to this is to note the problem of what holds the "bundle" together. Another standard objection assumes that the properties are universals; in that case the Bundle Theory leads to the Identity of Indiscernibles, which can be argued against. (See D.M. Armstrong, Nominalism and Realism: Universals and Scientific Realism, Vol. 1 [Cambridge University Press, 1978], Ch. 9.) Neither objec- tion holds for the identification of God with the Divine Nature. That nature is not a universal, and because it is simple there is no problem with holding together a bundle of properties. So in this case we have no need to distinguish the substance from the properties of the substance.

18. If there is a single property of human mercifulness, then this larger natural class will not be as natural as the one-member class consisting of human mercifulness. But if there is more than one property of human mercifulness, then the larger class may be the more natural.

19. Trinitarian footnote: We would likewise deny that God consists of three Divine Persons literally related. Rather, among the other one-place predicates which apply to God, but only in an extended sense I would include 'is a community of three persons.'

20. A natural classes of objects is, then, the class of all objects which share some given property.

21. Armstrong is notable among realists about universals for rejecting any simple

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correlation between general terms and universals. See D.M. Armstrong, A Theory of Universals: Universals and Scientific Realism, Vol. H (Cambridge University Press, 1978): Ch. 13. So he would reject the Single Universal Theory.

22. Though not as natural as a singleton. On this account naturalness admits of degrees.

23. I am not claiming that this class is as natural as either of the two used to generate it.

24. This example relies on the phenomenal. But it is only intended as an illustration of the logical relation of determinable to determinate. See W.E. Johnson, Logic, Part I (Cambridge University Press, 1921), Ch. 11.

25. Indeed the larger class which includes God may be more natural than the smaller one which includes only the various kinds of human mercifulness. This would happen, for instance, if the relation which generates the natural class is that between exemplar and copy, where the exemplar is either God or some property of God. In that case, the class of all human mercifulnesses might well be natural only because it is the intersection of this larger class with the class of all properties which humans can instantiate.

26. Or, in a more straightforward variant, because God has a property similar to human mercifulness.

27. If God is similar to human mercifulness and to human justice both to a high degree, then there would have to be some fairly high degree of similarity between human justice and human mercifulness. But there is not.

28. One half on a numerical scale. 29. Unless, that is, the natural kind term is one which corresponds to a universal,

as on the Single Universal Theory. My point, though, remains valid. Talk of God should not be any looser than talk of typical kinds, such as water, which may well fail to correspond to a single universal (because of the isotopes.)

30. Perhaps this is Scotus' "lesser unity" which Armstrong claims not to understand (Nominalism and Realism: Universals and Scientific Realism, Vol. 1 [Cambridge University Press, 1978], p. 87).

31. If we analyse X in terms of Y and vice versa, we can avoid circularity by means of Ramsey sentences. But the result is rather convoluted. Thus if X is G(Y) and Y is F(X), then we have to say that X is whatever is FG of itself. In the present case, this falls to specify what it is to be X.