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God Actually Does Exist: a Critical Discussion of Nagasawa’s Perfect Being Theism

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Abstract

Yujin Nagasawa has recently, in a sense, demonstrated that God, the central subject of his perfect being theism (PBT), exists, via his maximal God approach. In this article, I shall explain that Nagasawa’s journey towards this conclusion is fraught and that the conclusion, while plausibly correct, is of limited significance given that Nagasawa’s perfect being theism is not a single hypothesis but a very broad catch-all hypothesis that includes concepts of God that most would deny are worthy of the term.

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Notes

  1. Yujin Nagasawa, Maximal God: A New Defence of Perfect Being Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 2–3.

  2. Nagasawa (MG), p. 40.

  3. Nagasawa (MG), p. 11.

  4. Nagasawa (MG), p. 14.

  5. More on this later.

  6. Nagasawa (MG), pp. 82–87.

  7. Nagasawa (MG), p. 90.

  8. Interestingly, Nagasawa seems to admit that we may not be able to ‘completely eliminate.

    the argument from evil by appealing to the maximal God approach’, hinting that a theodicy might still be necessary. See Nagasawa (MG), p. 114. I suspect, however, that that would only be necessary once the believer in the maximal God starts providing more clarity about their preferred divine model, and this would not necessarily be applicable to all believers in a maximal God.

  9. Nagasawa (MG), p. 120.

  10. Nagasawa (MG), p. 123.

  11. Nagasawa (MG), p. 124.

  12. Nagasawa (MG), p. 184.

  13. Alvin Plantinga and James F. Sennett, The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), pp. 65–71.

  14. Nagasawa (MG), pp. 184–202.

  15. Nagasawa (MG), pp. 204–205.

  16. Indeed, Jonathan L. Kvanvig, writing for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (available online at https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/maximal-god-a-new-defense-of-perfect-being-theism, accessed 09/02/2021), finds the ‘claim that consistency guarantees possibility’ to be ‘rather astonishing’.

  17. Nagasawa (MG), p. 206.

  18. Graham Robert Oppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

  19. Graham Robert Oppy, "Review of Yujin Nagasawa, Maximal God: A New Defence of Perfect Being Theism," Sophia 57(2018): 189–191. This is a very useful review. I do not go into detail here as I have additional concerns regarding Nagasawa’s work. To be clear, however, I would agree with Oppy, and Kvanvig, and many other philosophers, that every key claim that forms part of the modal ontological argument is controversial, such as the claim that there is a single maximally great being that exists in all possible worlds.

  20. Nagasawa (MG), p. 207.

  21. "Defining “God”," accessed 19/11/2013, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/defining-god.

  22. Also see William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), pp. 155, 300.

  23. Craig (RF), pp. 249, 258.

  24. Craig (RF), pp. 50, 108, 111, 152, 264.

  25. Craig (RF), pp. 152–154, 254.

  26. "Two Arguments Against God," accessed 08/07/2016, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/two-arguments-against-god. Craig prefers the term ‘maximally great’, and here says that these terms are essentially synonyms.

  27. Craig links this to God’s being ‘free’. See Craig (RF), pp. 275–276. See also William Lane Craig, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010), pp. 158–161.

  28. Nagasawa (MG), p. 12.

  29. Nagasawa (MG), pp. 8–9.

  30. This brings to mind the Norse myth of the slaying of the primordial Ymir, by Odin, Vili, and Vé.

  31. Nagasawa (MG), pp. 11–14.

  32. Nagasawa (MG), p. 11.

  33. This is very common in the field. In the event that Nagasawa does not here mean to equate the terms, my point remains. Nagasawa seeks to exclude what he calls atheists from the group that believes in the maximal God. I maintain that there is no reason to exclude people (who may or may not call themselves atheists and/or naturalists) who believe that there is no divine reality but do believe that the purely naturalistic universe is the greatest possible being or thing.

  34. Even on a tensed view of time an increase in the knowledge in the Universe over time might be offset elsewhere, such as with a decrease in benevolence, an easily grasped concept in these troubled times.

  35. Nagasawa (MG), p. viii.

  36. Nagasawa (MG), pp. 14–15.

  37. Nagasawa (MG), p. 40.

  38. Nagasawa (MG), p. 93.

  39. The Christian journal Faith and Philosophy has published a review of Maximal God that duly supposes that some theists would object to Nagasawa suggesting ‘that their tradition is mistaken’ and indicates that it is unlikely that many devout Catholics and Muslims, amongst others, would so readily dispense with their God’s omni-properties. See Andrew M. Bailey, "Review of Yujin Nagasawa, Maximal God: A New Defence of Perfect Being Theism," Faith and Philosophy 36, no. 2 (2019): 275–280.

  40. Several philosophers, such as Herman Philipse and Raphael Lataster, have pointed to the importance of considering supernaturalistic alternatives to traditional theism. Purushottama Bilimoria has been very active in advocating panentheism. Nagasawa has himself co-edited a book on alternatives such as panentheism. See Herman Philipse, God in the Age of Science?: A Critique of Religious Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).; Raphael Lataster, The Case Against Theism: Why the Evidence Disproves God’s Existence (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018).; Purushottama Bilimoria and Ellen Stansell, "Suturing the Body Corporate (Divine and Human) in the Brahmanic Traditions," Sophia 49, no. 2 (2010): 237–259.; Raphael Lataster and Purushottama Bilimoria, "Panentheism(s): What It Is and Is Not," Journal of World Philosophies 3, no. 2 (2018): 49–64.; Andrei A. Buckareff and Yujin Nagasawa, eds., Alternative Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

  41. Think Kabbalists, Gnostics, and Sufis.

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  1. University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Raphael Lataster

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Correspondence to Raphael Lataster.

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Lataster, R. God Actually Does Exist: a Critical Discussion of Nagasawa’s Perfect Being Theism. SOPHIA 61, 811–824 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00865-1

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