God, Christ and Possibilities

God, Christ and PossibilitiesAuthor(s): R. L. SturchSource: Religious Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Mar., 1980), pp. 81-84Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20005633 .

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Rel. Stud. i6, pp. 8 I-84

R. L. STURCH Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, London Bible College

GOD, CHRIST AND POSSIBILITIES

I propose to begin with some fairly unexciting and uncontroversial remarks about possibility-statements, and then in their light to examine two problems philosophers have raised about certain statements of this kind which might be made in Christian theology where it touches on the doctrine of the Incarnation.

We may, I suggest, distinguish two types of possibility-statement. One comprises statements of strict logical possibility, and serves primarily to exclude the state of affairs referred to from the class of the logically impossible. The second comprises what we may call statements of relative possibility, and it includes the vast majority of probability-statements actually made in everyday life. 'I may possibly be away next weekend' 'It is possible that we left the fridge switched on ' ' Is it going to rain? ' ' Possibly'. In such a case the possibility is relative to the speaker's existing knowledge, or at least to that part of his knowledge on which he is drawing at the time

of speaking. Now it was asserted some years ago by Professor C. B. Martin' that there

is a basic contradiction in the idea of the Incarnation which arises when we consider what is conceivable and what is not conceivable about Christ as he is seen by the orthodox. 'The contradiction is', we are told, 'that Christ can

be conceived to have been other (that is, not good) than he was, yet as God

it should be not false but inconceivable that he should not have been good.' Similarly, it has been remarked more recently that 'if Jesus is able to will evil, he is not divine, and if he is not able to will evil, he is not human '.2

Now whatever other defects there may be in traditional Christology, I think it can be shown that this is not one. The apparent contradiction is between two propositions, (i) 'It was possible that Christ should not be good' and (ii) 'It was not possible that Christ should not be good' - the first being implied, presumably, by his humanity and the second by his divinity. (I use the language of 'possibility' rather than that of 'conceivability', as the latter

might be thought to raise questions of human powers of conceiving, which obviously can and do vary from time to time.) Now as we have noticed, possibility is normally relative; a state of affairs cannot, except in the sense

1 Religious Belief (Cornell U.P., I959), p. 6I; cf. Flew and Maclntyre, New Essays in Philosophical Theology (S.C.M., I955), p. 225

2 K. Ward in 'Theology', LXXXI (May I978), 215.

0034-4125/80/2828-2940 $01.50 ?) I980 Cambridge University Press



82 R. L. STURCH

of strict logical possibility, be possible in itself, but only given some other state of affairs. And if the 'given' element changes, the possibility of the first state of affairs changes too. To borrow an illustration from Avicenna, a man is capable of being a bird, in so far as he is an animal - but not in so far as

he is a man! Given as our background knowledge or evidence that Dickie is an animal, it is possible that he is a bird; given that he is a human being,

it is quite impossible. Yet being an animal and being a human are in no way

incompatible. Similarly, given as our evidence that Christ was human, the assertion 'Christ could have sinned (even if in fact he never did)' is a possible one; given also that he was divine, it is not. And there is no contradiction. Indeed, very much the same situation can arise with others besides Christ.

Given 'Jane is human' it is possible that Jane is a sinner; given that Jane

is only two hours old, it is not. Yet being two hours old does not preclude being human.

It may perhaps be replied that we are not dealing with propositions or 'possible states of affairs' but with the allegedly actual predicates or qualities

of Christ - peccability in his human nature and impeccability in his divine. But this is merely a change in the language used to pose the problem, not in the problem itself. Once again we can apply it to Avicenna's possible bird.

Dickie is 'able-to-be-a-bird' ('aviable'?) in his animality, but he is 'unable to-be-a-bird', non-aviable, in his humanity. Actually, of course, peccability and impeccability are slightly bogus predicates. What they actually refer to are not qualities of Christ (or anyone else) but the ways in which goodness is related to human and divine nature - contingently and necessarily, respectively.

Can this last point be used to rephrase the original problem? 'It is a

necessary truth that Christ was good' (for he was divine) but 'It is not a necessary truth that Christ was good' (for he was human). No, this makes

no difference. The statement 'Christ was good' is by itself certainly contingent, if by 'Christ' is meant a specific historical human being. What is necessarily true is the statement 'If Christ was divine, he was good'; and

this in no way contradicts its opposite number 'If Christ was human, then

perhaps he was good and perhaps he wasn't'.

Martin's argument is similar to this last one, except that (as already noted)

he used the language of 'conceivability'. 'Let the suggestion be that the

human-finite nature of Christ is that which could have been otherwise and

that the divine-infinite nature of Christ is that which could not have been

otherwise... But what about Christ could not have been otherwise? We can

conceive to have been different from what it in fact was every individual

thought, word, action, capacity and disposition.'1 Now of course if Christ is

simply picked out as, say, a carpenter from Nazareth who taught in Palestine

under the Emperor Tiberius, then what Martin says is perfectly true. We

1 Op. cit. p. 62. (Flew and Maclntyre, p. 226.)



GOD, CHRIST AND POSSIBILITIES 83

can conceive or imagine that a person fitting this description was a liar, a thief, a murderer - anything we like. What we cannot conceive without self-contradiction is that this person was a thief or a murderer and divine.

Our imaginations can run riot if we leave out of consideration the fact of Christ's divinity, just as they can run riot with anyone or anything if we leave out of consideration some fact about them, or are ignorant of it. If Dickie is simply thought of as 'the animal in such-and-such a place', he may be conceived of as a bird, a beaver or a beetle. What we can conceive of Dickie,

or of Christ, depends on what we are taking as given. But this can hardly

be made out to be a defect in Chalcedonian Christology. The situation is far more complicated when we come to look at our second

problem, which was raised in print by Professor P. T. Geach' (based on an oral contribution from the late Michael Foster). God cannot (according to Aquinas and a good many others) be a body; nor can he be tired, oblivious, angry or sorrowful; he cannot suffer violence or be overcome; and he cannot undergo corruption. All these seem to follow from a widespread concept of God. Yet as a Christian Aquinas was committed to believing that God could be, and in fact was, all these things, through his Incarnation in Jesus. Now this problem is worse for the Christian than Martin's was, for in Martin's at least Jesus was not believed to have actually sinned, even though it was only a contingent fact that he did not: but he actually was embodied, tired, and the rest, and how can this be squared with his being divine?

Geach himself suggests that the solution lies in the logic of the particle 'as' - what God can do as God is different from what he can do simpliciter, and some things may fall under the second heading but not under the first. This is clearly correct, but to work it out in detail is not all that simple, as Geach recognises. Geach's illustration - thatJones may, for instance, sign one letter as Director of the Gnome Works and another as the Mayor of Middletown - shows well enough how this sort of 'as' works in many everyday uses. But it will not by itself resolve our difficulty. For suppose thatJones is, as Mayor, debarred from voting at Council meetings unless a casting vote is needed; then it is of no avail for him to try and vote in the ordinary way 'as Director' or as anything else, even though he is not of course debarred 'as Director'. The impossibility of voting applies to anyone who holds the office of Mayor. Similarly, if Christ is, as God, debarred from feeling tired, then surely he is also debarred from being tired simpliciter, even though he is not debarred from it as, say, carpenter.

It seems possible that a clue to a solution is to be found in the distinction between 'X is, as P, Q' and 'X, as P, is Q'. This distinction is raised by Geach, but he does not pursue it as far as he might, partly perhaps because of his conviction that the first form is the only proper 'as-statement'. The second, he suggests, leads in Christology to Nestorianism, and in less

1 'Omnipotence' (Philosophy, I973, pp. i8 ff.); Providence and Evil (C.U.P., 1976, pp. 24 if.).



84 R. L. STURCH

theologically sensitive areas to problems over such assertions as 'Jones has the opportunity of attending the committee meeting as Mayor', which can be true whether or not Jones is Mayor yet, but which cannot be stated in the second form unless he is. In fact, however, both forms or analyses are perfectly legitimate. It is true that Geach's example can be stated only if we analyse in the first way; but then it is equally true that my example about the non-casting vote can be stated only if we analyse in the second. The two forms correspond to sentences of the types 'X is Q in its capacity as P' and 'X is Qbecause it is P', both of which are perfectly respectable grammatically

and logically. (Of course, not all 'because' statements can be rephrased with an 'as'.) Now once this is recognized, questions of our knowledge again become relevant. For there is this crucial difference between the two: With statements of the second form, the moment we know that X is P, we know it is also Q But this is not the case with the first form. 'Holliday is, in his capacity as a marksman, admirable' does not entail that Holliday is admirable simpliciter, nor is it incompatible with the assertion 'Holliday is, in his capacity as an influence on society, deplorable'.

The question is, for the theologian, to which form assertions like 'God cannot be a body' or 'God cannot be tired' should be assigned. (I am assuming that these are to be understood as compressed forms either of ' God cannot be tired-as-God' or 'God, as God, cannot ever be tired'.) Knowledge again is our clue: we do perhaps know enough about divinity to know that it excludes tiredness from its own sphere, that no-one who is God can be tired in the work proper to him as God. But this does not automatically entail (though it might of course be true, and indeed an Arian, say, might try to show that it was) that we know enough about divinity to be sure that it excludes tiredness from anyone who shares in it, that no one who is God can ever be tired in any capacity. Assertions like 'God cannot be tired' do therefore require analysis (failing more complete information) into the first form.

But what, then, of 'God cannot do evil', with which we began? We had earlier, in effect, been treating this as an instance of the second form: Christ, being God, could not do evil, although the information that he was human left it possible that he could. Would it not have been a simpler solution of

our first problem to recast the assertion that God cannot do evil into the first

form, and say that Christ could not do evil in his capacity as God? This would indeed be possible; there is no logical objection to it at all. It is doubtful, however, whether Christian believers would find it acceptable, as it would evidently leave it quite possible that Christ, even given that he was God, did really sin, just as he was really tired. And I think such believers would be right to reject this approach. God would normally be thought to have a positive antipathy to evil which he need not have to tiredness; it may be that

we know enough about divinity to be sure that it excludes wickedness from anyone who possesses it, even where non-divine capacities are concerned.



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God, Christ and Possibilities