Published in 1650, the full title of Ussher's work in Latin is Annales
Veteris Testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti, una cum rerum
Asiaticarum et Aegyptiacarum chronico, a temporis historici principio
usque ad Maccabaicorum initia producto ("Annals of the Old
Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world, the chronicle of
Asiatic and Egyptian matters together produced from the beginning of
historical time up to the beginnings of Maccabees").
Ussher's work was his contribution to the long-running theological debate on the age of the Earth. This was a major concern of many Christian scholars over the centuries.
The chronology is sometimes called the Ussher–Lightfoot chronology because John Lightfoot
published a similar chronology in 1642–1644. This, however, is a
misnomer, as the chronology is based on Ussher's work alone and not that
of Lightfoot. Ussher deduced that the first day of creation was October 23, 4004 BC on the proleptic Julian calendar, near the autumnal equinox. Lightfoot similarly deduced that Creation began at nightfall near the autumnal equinox, but in the year 3929 BC.
Ussher's proposed date of 4004 BC differed little from other biblically-based estimates, such as those of Jose ben Halafta (3761 BC), Bede (3952 BC), Ussher's near-contemporary Scaliger (3949 BC), Johannes Kepler (3992 BC) or Sir Isaac Newton (c. 4000 BC). Ussher was influenced by the same account as the apocryphalBook of Jasher, dating the worldwide flood to 2349 BC and the birth of Terah in 2127 BC. The date of 4000 BC as the creation of Adam
was at least partially influenced by the widely held belief that the
Earth was approximately 5600 years old (2000 to Abraham, 2000 from
Abraham to the birth of Christ,
and 1600 years from Christ to Ussher), corresponding to the six days of
Creation, on the grounds that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand
years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Peter 3:8). This tradition was believed to indicate that Jesus would return in 2000 AD, more than six thousand years after 4004 BC. Modern proponents of this
interpretation hold that the creation date 4004 BC could be inaccurate.
Ussher's methods
The
chronologies of Ussher and other biblical scholars corresponded so
closely because they used much the same method to calculate key events
recorded in the Bible.
Establishing the chronologies is complicated by the fact that the Bible
was compiled by different authors over several centuries with lengthy
chronological gaps, making it difficult to do a simple totaling of
Biblical ages and dates. In his article on Ussher's calendar, James Barr
has identified three distinct periods that Ussher and others had to
tackle:
"Creation to Abraham's migration." This section is fairly
easy to calculate, using the chronological data in Genesis 5 and 11,
which gives an unbroken male lineage, with numbers of years, from the
creation to Abraham being called out of Ur of the Chaldeans. Ussher used
the chronology found in the Masoretic text instead of the alternative
chronologies found in the Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch. Ussher
fixed this period as 2082 years, from 4004 to 1922 BC.
"Abraham's migration to Solomon's temple." Ussher wrote that
the time from Abraham leaving Haran to the Exodus was 430 years (based
on Abraham's descendants suffering a period of 400 years of persecution,
commencing 30 years after Abraham left Haran) 1 Kings 6
states that 480 years elapsed from the Exodus to the beginning of
construction of Solomon's temple in the fourth year of Solomon's reign.
Thus the temple foundations were laid 910 years after Abraham left
Haran; these 910 years spanned from 1922 to 1012 BC.
"Period of the temple laid to the Babylonian captivity." This
period is the most difficult to calculate, due to repeated difficulties
in correlating the regnal years of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel.
The simple addition of the reigns of Judah's kings results in a total of
430 years, but by positing a few overlapping reigns, Ussher shortened
this to 424 years: 1012 to 588 BC.
After reckoning the years from creation to the last kings of Judah, Ussher used 2 Kings 25:27 to establish the length of time from the creation to the accession of Babylonian kingAmel-Marduk (also known as Evil-Merodach).
He then used information from Babylonian, Greek, and Roman sources to
fix the date of Amel-Marduk's enthronement at 562 BC (after
Nebuchadnezzar's death), from which he was able to deduce a creation in
4004 BC.
In fixing the date of Jesus' birth, Ussher took account of an error perpetrated by Dionysius Exiguus, the founder of the Anno Domini numbering system. Ussher chose 5 BC as Christ's birth year because Josephus indicated that the death of Herod the Great occurred in 4 BC. Thus, for the Gospel of Matthew to be correct, Jesus could not have been born after that date.
The season in which Creation occurred was the subject of considerable theological
debate in Ussher's time. Many scholars proposed it had taken place in
the spring, the start of the Babylonian, Chaldean and other cultures'
chronologies. Others, including Ussher, thought it more likely that it
had occurred in the autumn, largely because that season marked the beginning of the Jewish year.
Ussher further narrowed down the date by using the Jewish calendar to establish the "first day" of creation as falling on a Sunday near the autumnal equinox.
The day of the week was a backward calculation from the six days of
creation with God resting on the seventh, which in the Jewish calendar
is Saturday—hence, Creation began on a Sunday. The astronomical tables
that Ussher probably used were Kepler's Tabulae Rudolphinae (Rudolphine Tables,
1627). Using them, he would have concluded that the equinox occurred on
Tuesday, October 25, only one day earlier than the traditional day of
its creation, on the fourth day of Creation week, Wednesday, along with
the Sun, Moon, and stars Genesis 1:16. Modern equations place the autumnal equinox of 4004 BC on Sunday, October 23 (by the Julian calendar).
Ussher's understanding of creation placed the "first day" referred to in Genesis 1:5 on October 23, but with a "pre-creation" event, which he identified as the "beginning of time" occurring the previous night. Ussher referred to his dating of creation on the first page of Annales in Latin and on the first page of its English translation Annals of the World
(1658). In the following extract from the English translation, the
phrase "in the year of the Julian Calendar" refers to the Julian Period,
of which year 1 is 4713 BC, and therefore year 710 is 4004 BC.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Ge. 1:1 This
beginning of time, according to our chronology, happened at the start of
the evening preceding the 23rd day of October in the year of the Julian
Calendar, 710.
Ussher provides a slightly different time in his "Epistle to the Reader" in his Latin and English works:
"I deduce that the time from the creation until midnight, January 1, 1
AD was 4003 years, seventy days and six hours." Six hours before
midnight would be 6 pm.
Ussher's chronology today
By the middle of the 19th century, Ussher's chronology came under increasing attack from supporters of uniformitarianism,
who argued that Ussher's "young Earth" was incompatible with the
increasingly accepted view of an Earth much more ancient than Ussher's.
It became generally accepted that the Earth was tens, perhaps even
hundreds of millions of years old. Ussher fell into disrepute among theologians as well; in 1890, Princeton professor William Henry Green wrote a highly influential article in Bibliotheca Sacra entitled "Primeval Chronology" in which he strongly criticised Ussher. He concluded:
We conclude that the Scriptures furnish no data for a chronological
computation prior to the life of Abraham; and that the Mosaic records do
not fix and were not intended to fix the precise date either of the
Flood or of the creation of the world.
The similarly conservative theologian B. B. Warfield reached the same conclusion in "On The Antiquity and Unity of the Human Race", commenting that "it is precarious in the highest degree to draw chronological inferences from genealogical tables".
Archbishop Ussher's chronology has in recent years been subject to artistic criticism, including in the play Inherit the Wind (based on the Scopes Monkey Trial) and the fantasy novel Good Omens which alleges that "he is off by a quarter of an hour".
A different viewpoint comes from Stephen Jay Gould, who, while totally disagreeing with Ussher's chronology, nevertheless wrote:
I shall be defending Ussher's chronology as an honorable effort for
its time and arguing that our usual ridicule only records a lamentable
small-mindedness based on mistaken use of present criteria to judge a
distant and different past
Ussher represented the best of scholarship in his time. He was part
of a substantial research tradition, a large community of intellectuals
working toward a common goal under an accepted methodology…
The Oxford English Dictionary
defines wisdom as "Capacity of judging rightly in matters relating to
life and conduct; soundness of judgement in the choice of means and
ends; sometimes, less strictly, sound sense, esp. in practical affairs:
opp. to folly;" also "Knowledge (esp. of a high or abstruse kind);
enlightenment, learning, erudition." Charles Haddon Spurgeon defined wisdom as "the right use of knowledge". Robert I. Sutton and Andrew Hargadon
defined the "attitude of wisdom" as "acting with knowledge while
doubting what one knows". Psycanics defines wisdom as "the ability to
foresee the consequences of action" (allowing one to avoid negative
consequences and produce the desired positive ones.) In social and
psychological sciences, several distinct approaches to wisdom exist, with major advances made in the last two decades with respect to operationalization and measurement
of wisdom as a psychological construct. Wisdom is the capacity to have
foreknowledge of something, to know the consequences (both positive and
negative) of all the available course of actions, and to yield or take
the options with the most advantage either for present or future
implication.
Mythological and philosophical perspectives
The ancient Greeks considered wisdom to be an important virtue, personified as the goddessesMetis and Athena. Metis was the first wife of Zeus, who, according to Hesiod's Theogony,
had devoured her pregnant; Zeus earned the title of Mêtieta ("The Wise
Counselor") after that, as Metis was the embodiment of wisdom, and he
gave birth to Athena, who is said to have sprung from his head. Athena was portrayed as strong, fair, merciful, and chaste. Apollo was also considered a god of wisdom, designated as the conductor of the Muses (Musagetes), who were personifications of the sciences and of the inspired and poetic arts; According to Plato in his Cratylus, the name of Apollo could also mean "Ballon" (archer) and "Omopoulon"
(unifier of poles [divine and earthly]), since this god was responsible
for divine and true inspirations, thus considered an archer who was
always right in healing and oracles: "he is an ever-darting archer". Apollo was considered the god who prophesied through the priestesses (Pythia) in the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), where the aphorism "know thyself" (gnōthi seauton) was inscribed (part of the wisdom of the Delphic maxims). He was contrasted with Hermes, who was related to the sciences and technical wisdom, and, in the first centuries after Christ, was associated with Thoth in an Egyptian syncretism, under the name Hermes Trimegistus. Greek tradition recorded the earliest introducers of wisdom in the Seven Sages of Greece.
To Socrates and Plato, philosophy was literally the love of wisdom (philo-sophia). This permeates Plato's dialogues; in The Republic the leaders of his proposed utopia are philosopher kings who understand the Form of the Good and possess the courage to act accordingly. Aristotle, in Metaphysics, defined wisdom as understanding why things are a certain way (causality), which is deeper than merely knowing things are a certain way. He was the first to make the distinction between phronesis and sophia.
According to Plato and Xenophon, the Pythia of the Delphic Oracle answered the question "who is the wisest man in Greece?" by stating Socrates was the wisest. According to Plato's Apology, Socrates decided to investigate the people who might be considered wiser than him, concluding they lacked true knowledge:
[…] οὗτος μὲν οἴεταί τι εἰδέναι οὐκ
εἰδώς, ἐγὼ δέ, ὥσπερ οὖν οὐκ οἶδα, οὐδὲ οἴομαι [I am wiser than this
man; for neither of us really knows anything fine and good, but this man
thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not know
anything, do not think I do either.]
The ancient Romans also valued wisdom which was personified in Minerva,
or Pallas. She also represents skillful knowledge and the virtues,
especially chastity. Her symbol was the owl which is still a popular
representation of wisdom, because it can see in darkness. She was said
to be born from Jupiter's forehead.
In Buddhist traditions, developing wisdom plays a central role
where comprehensive guidance on how to develop wisdom is provided. In the Inuit tradition, developing wisdom was one of the aims of teaching. An Inuit Elder
said that a person became wise when they could see what needed to be
done and did it successfully without being told what to do.
In many cultures, the name for third molars, which are the last
teeth to grow, is etymologically linked with wisdom, e.g., as in the
English wisdom tooth. It has its nickname originated from the classical tradition, which in the Hippocratic writings has already been called sóphronistér (in Greek, related to the meaning of moderation or teaching a lesson), and in Latindens sapientiae (wisdom tooth), since they appear at the age of maturity in late adolescence and early adulthood.
Educational perspectives
Truth and Wisdom assist History in writing by Jacob de Wit, 1754
Public schools in the US have an approach to character education. Eighteenth century thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin,
referred to this as training wisdom and virtue. Traditionally, schools
share the responsibility to build character and wisdom along with
parents and the community.
Nicholas Maxwell, a contemporary philosopher in the United Kingdom, advocates that academia ought to alter its focus from the acquisition of knowledge to seeking and promoting wisdom. This he defines as the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others. He teaches that new knowledge and technological know-how increase our power to act. Without wisdom though, Maxwell claims this new knowledge may cause human harm as well as human good.
Psychological perspectives
Psychologists have begun to gather data on commonly held beliefs or folk theories about wisdom.
Initial analyses indicate that although "there is an overlap of the
implicit theory of wisdom with intelligence, perceptiveness,
spirituality and shrewdness, it is evident that wisdom is an expertise
in dealing with difficult questions of life and adaptation to the
complex requirements."
Such implicit theories stand in contrast to the explicit theories
and empirical research on resulting psychological processes underlying
wisdom. Opinions on the exact psychological definitions of wisdom vary, but there is some consensus that critical to wisdom are certain meta-cognitive processes affording life reflection and judgment about critical life matters.
These processes include recognizing the limits of one's own knowledge,
acknowledging uncertainty and change, attention to context and the
bigger picture, and integrating different perspectives of a situation.
Cognitive scientists suggest that wisdom requires coordinating such
reasoning processes, as they may provide insightful solutions for
managing one's life. Notably, such reasoning is both theoretically and empirically distinct from general intelligence. Robert Sternberg
has suggested that wisdom is not to be confused with general (fluid or
crystallized) intelligence. In line with this idea, researchers have
shown empirically that wise reasoning is distinct from IQ. Several more nuanced characterizations of wisdom are listed below.
Baltes and colleagues in Wisdom: its structure and function in regulating lifespan successful development
defined wisdom as "the ability to deal with the contradictions of a
specific situation and to assess the consequences of an action for
themselves and for others. It is achieved when in a concrete situation, a
balance between intrapersonal, inter- personal and institutional
interests can be prepared".
Balance itself appears to be a critical criterion of wisdom. Empirical
research started to provide support to this idea, showing that
wisdom-related reasoning is associated with achieving balance between
intrapersonal and interpersonal interests when facing personal life
challenges, and when setting goals for managing interpersonal conflicts.
Researchers in the field of positive psychology have defined wisdom as the coordination of "knowledge and experience" and "its deliberate use to improve well being." Under this definition, wisdom is further defined with the following facets:
Problem Solving with self-knowledge and sustainable actions.
Contextual sincerity to the circumstances with knowledge of its negative (or constraints) and positive aspects.
Value based consistent actions with knowledge of diversity in ethical opinions.
Tolerance towards uncertainty in life with unconditional acceptance.
Empathy with oneself to understand one's own emotions (or to be
emotionally oriented), morals...etc. and others feelings including the
ability to see oneself as part of a larger whole.
This theoretical model has not been tested empirically, with an
exception of a broad link between wisdom-related reasoning and
well-being.
Grossmann and colleagues have synthesized prior psychological
literature, indicating that in the face of ill-defined life situations
wisdom involves certain cognitive processes affording unbiased, sound judgment:
(i) intellectual humility or recognition of limits of own knowledge;
(ii) appreciation of perspectives broader than the issue at hand; (iii)
sensitivity to the possibility of change in social relations; and (iv)
compromise or integration of different perspectives. Grossmann found that habitual speaking and thinking of oneself in the third person increases these characteristics, which means that such a habit makes a person wiser.
Importantly, Grossmann highlights the fundamental role of contextual
factors, including the role of culture, experiences, and social
situations for understanding, development, and propensity of showing
wisdom, with implications for training and educational practice.
This situated account of wisdom ushered a novel phase of wisdom
scholarship, using rigorous evidence-based methods to understand
contextual factors affording sound judgment. For instance, Grossmann and
Kross have identified a phenomenon they called "the Solomon's paradox" -
wiser reflections on other people's problems as compared to one's own.
It is named after King Solomon,
the third leader of the Jewish Kingdom, who has shown a great deal of
wisdom when making judgments about other people's dilemmas but lacked
insight when it came to important decisions in his own life.
Empirical scientists have also begun to focus on the role of emotions in wisdom.
Most researchers would agree that emotions and emotion regulation would
be key to effectively managing the kinds of complex and arousing
situations that would most call for wisdom. However, much empirical
research has focused on the cognitive or meta-cognitive aspects of
wisdom, assuming that an ability to reason through difficult situations
would be paramount. Thus, although emotions would likely play a role in
determining how wisdom plays out in real events and on reflecting on
past events, only recently has empirical evidence started to provide
robust evidence on how and when different emotions improve or harm a
person's ability to deal wisely with complex events. One notable finding
concerns the positive relationship between diversity of emotional
experience and wise reasoning, irrespective of emotional intensity.
Measuring wisdom
Measurement
of wisdom often depends on researcher's theoretical position about the
nature of wisdom. A major distinction here concerning either viewing
wisdom as a stable personality trait or rather as a context-bound
process.
The former approach often capitalizes on single-shot questionnaires.
However, recent studies indicated that such single-shot questionnaires
produce biased responses, which is antithetical to the wisdom construct
and neglects the notion that wisdom is best understood in the contexts
when it is most relevant, namely in complex life challenges. In
contrast, the latter approach advocates for measuring wisdom-related
features of cognition, motivation, and emotion on the level of a
specific situation.
Use of such state-level measures provides less biased responses as well
as greater power in explaining meaningful psychological processes.
Furthermore, a focus on the level of the situation has allowed wisdom
researchers to develop a fuller understanding of the role of context
itself for producing wisdom. Specifically, studies showed evidence of cross-cultural and within-cultural variability and systematic variability in reasoning wisely across contexts and in daily life.
Many, but not all, studies find that adults' self-ratings of perspective and wisdom do not depend on age. This belief stands in contrast to the popular notion that wisdom increases with age.
The answer to the question of age-wisdom association depends on how one
defines wisdom, and the methodological framework used to evaluate
theoretical claims. Most recent work suggests that the answer to this
question also depends on the degree of experience in a specific domain,
with some contexts favoring older adults, others favoring younger
adults, and some not differentiating age groups.
Notably, rigorous longitudinal work is necessary to fully unpack the
question of age-wisdom relationship and such work is still outstanding,
with most studies relying on cross-sectional observations.
Sapience
Sapience is closely related to the term "sophia" often defined as "transcendent wisdom", "ultimate reality", or the ultimate truth of things.
Sapiential perspective of wisdom is said to lie in the heart of every
religion, where it is often acquired through intuitive knowing.
This type of wisdom is described as going beyond mere practical wisdom
and includes self-knowledge, interconnectedness, conditioned origination
of mind-states and other deeper understandings of subjective
experience. This type of wisdom can also lead to the ability of an individual to act with appropriate judgement, a broad understanding of situations and greater appreciation/compassion towards other living beings.
The word sapience is derived from the Latinsapientia, meaning "wisdom".
The corresponding verb sapere has the original meaning of "to taste", hence "to perceive, to discern" and "to know"; its present participle sapiens was chosen by Carl Linnaeus for the Latin binomial for the human species, Homo sapiens.
Religious perspectives
Ancient Near East
In Mesopotamian religion and mythology, Enki,
also known as Ea, was the God of wisdom and intelligence. Divine Wisdom
allowed the provident designation of functions and the ordering of the
cosmos, and it was achieved by humans in following me-s (in Sumerian, order, rite, righteousness), restoring the balance. In addition to hymns to Enki or Ea dating from the third millennium BC., there is amongst the clay tablets of Abu Salabikh from 2600 BC, considered as being the oldest dated texts, an "Hymn to Shamash", in which it is recorded written:
Wide is the courtyard of Shamash night chamber, (just as wide is the womb of) a wise pregnant woman! Sin,
his warrior, wise one, heard of the offerings and came down to his
fiesta. He is the father of the nation and the father of intelligence
Sia represents the personification of perception and thoughtfulness in the traditional mythology adhered to in Ancient Egypt. Thoth, married to Maat (in ancient Egyptian, meaning order, righteousness, truth), was also important and regarded as a national introducer of wisdom.
Zoroastrianism
In the Avesta hymns traditionally attributed to Zoroaster, the Gathas, Ahura Mazda
means "Lord" (Ahura) and "Wisdom" (Mazda), and it is the central deity
who embodies goodness, being also called "Good Thought" (Vohu Manah). In Zoroastrianism in general, the order of the universe and morals is called Asha (in Avestan, truth, righteousness), which is determined by the designations of this omniscient Thought and also considered a deity emanating from Ahura (Amesha Spenta); it is related to another ahura deity, Spenta Mainyu (active Mentality). It says in Yazna 31:
To him shall the best befall, who,
as one that knows, speaks to me Right's truthful word of Welfare and of
Immortality; even the Dominion of Mazda which Good Thought shall
increase for him. About which he in the beginning thus thought, "let the
blessed realms be filled with Light", he it is that by his wisdom
created Right.
Hebrew Bible and Judaism
The word wisdom (חכם) is mentioned 222 times in the Hebrew Bible.
It was regarded as one of the highest virtues among the Israelites
along with kindness (חסד) and justice (צדק). Both the books of Proverbs and Psalms urge readers to obtain and to increase in wisdom.
In the Hebrew Bible, wisdom is represented by Solomon, who asks God for wisdom in 2 Chronicles 1:10. Much of the Book of Proverbs, which is filled with wise sayings, is attributed to Solomon. In Proverbs 9:10, the fear of the Lord is called the beginning of wisdom. In Proverbs 1:20,
there is also reference to wisdom personified in female form, "Wisdom
calls aloud in the streets, she raises her voice in the marketplaces."
In Proverbs 8:22–31, this personified wisdom is described as being present with God before creation began and even taking part in creation itself.
The Talmud teaches that a wise person is a person who can foresee the future. Nolad is a Hebrew word for "future," but also the Hebrew word for birth,
so one rabbinic interpretation of the teaching is that a wise person is
one who can foresee the consequences of his/her choices (i.e. can "see
the future" that he/she "gives birth" to).
Hellenistic religion and Gnosticism
Christian theology
In Christian theology, "wisdom" (From Hebrew: חכמה transliteration: chokmâh pronounced: khok-maw', Greek: Sophia, Latin: Sapientia) describes an aspect of God, or the theological concept regarding the wisdom of God.
There is an oppositional element in Christian thought between secular wisdom and Godly wisdom. Paul the Apostle states that worldly wisdom thinks the claims of Christ to be foolishness. However, to those who are "on the path to salvation" Christ represents the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:17–31) Wisdom is considered one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit according to Anglican, Catholic, and Lutheran belief. 1 Corinthians 12:8–10 gives an alternate list of nine virtues, among which wisdom is one.
The book of Proverbs in the Old Testament of the Bible primarily
focuses on wisdom, and was primarily written by one of the wisest kings
according to Jewish history, King Solomon. Proverbs is found in the Old
Testament section of the Bible and gives direction on how to handle
various aspects of life; one's relationship with God, marriage, dealing
with finances, work, friendships and persevering in difficult situations
faced in life.
According to King Solomon, wisdom is gained from God, "For the Lord
gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding" Proverbs
2:6. And through God's wise aide, one can have a better life: "He holds
success in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is
blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of
his faithful ones" Proverbs 2:7-8. "Trust in the LORD with all your
heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to
him, and he will make your paths straight" Proverbs 3:5-6. Solomon
basically states that with the wisdom one receives from God, one will be
able to find success and happiness in life.
There are various verses in Proverbs that contain parallels of what God
loves, which is wise, and what God does not love, which is foolish. For
example, in the area of good and bad behaviour Proverbs states, "The
way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, But He loves him who
pursues righteousness (Proverbs 15:9). In relation to fairness and
business it is stated that, "A false balance is an abomination to the
Lord, But a just weight is His delight" (Proverbs 11:1; cf. 20:10,23).
On the truth it is said, "Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, But
those who deal faithfully are His delight" (12:22; cf. 6:17,19). These
are a few examples of what, according to Solomon, are good and wise in
the eyes of God, or bad and foolish, and in doing these good and wise
things, one becomes closer to God by living in an honorable and kind
manner.
King Solomon continues his teachings of wisdom in the book of
Ecclesiastes, which is considered one of the most depressing books of
the Bible. Solomon discusses his exploration of the meaning of life and
fulfillment, as he speaks of life's pleasures, work, and materialism,
yet concludes that it is all meaningless. "'Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher [Solomon]. 'Utterly meaningless! Everything is
meaningless'...For with much wisdom comes much sorrow, the more
knowledge, the more grief" (Ecclesiastes 1:2,18) Solomon concludes that
all life's pleasures and riches, and even wisdom, mean nothing if there
is no relationship with God.
The book of James, written by the apostle James, is said to be the New
Testament version of the book of Proverbs, in that it is another book
that discusses wisdom. It reiterates Proverbs message of wisdom coming
from God by stating, "If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God,
who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given
to you." James 1:5. James also explains how wisdom helps one acquire
other forms of virtue, "But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first
of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy
and good fruit, impartial and sincere." James 3:17. In addition,through wisdom for living James focuses on using this God-given wisdom to perform acts of service to the less fortunate.
Apart from Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and James, other main books of
wisdom in the Bible are Job, Psalms, and 1 and 2 Corinthians, which
give lessons on gaining and using wisdom through difficult situations.
Developing wisdom is of central importance in Buddhist
traditions, where the ultimate aim is often presented as "seeing things
as they are" or as gaining a "penetrative understanding of all
phenomena", which in turn is described as ultimately leading to the
"complete freedom from suffering".
In Buddhism, developing wisdom is accomplished through an understanding
of what are known as the Four Noble Truths and by following the Noble
Eightfold Path. This path lists mindfulness as one of eight required components for cultivating wisdom.
Buddhist scriptures teach that a wise person is usually endowed
with good and maybe bodily conduct, and sometimes good verbal conduct,
and good mental conduct.(AN 3:2)
A wise person does actions that are unpleasant to do but give good
results, and doesn't do actions that are pleasant to do but give bad
results (AN 4:115). Wisdom is the antidote to the self-chosen poison of ignorance. The Buddha has much to say on the subject of wisdom including:
He who arbitrates a case by force does not thereby become just (established in Dhamma). But the wise man is he who carefully discriminates between right and wrong.
He who leads others by nonviolence, righteously and equitably, is indeed a guardian of justice, wise and righteous.
One is not wise merely because he talks much. But he who is calm, free from hatred and fear, is verily called a wise man. By quietude alone one does not become a sage
(muni) if he is foolish and ignorant. But he who, as if holding a pair
of scales, takes the good and shuns the evil, is a wise man; he is
indeed a muni by that very reason. He who understands both good and evil
as they really are, is called a true sage.
To recover the original supreme wisdom of self-nature (Buddha-nature or Tathagata) covered by the self-imposed three dusty poisons (the kleshas:
greed, anger, ignorance) Buddha taught to his students the threefold
training by turning greed into generosity and discipline, anger into
kindness and meditation, ignorance into wisdom. As the Sixth Patriarch
of Chán Buddhism, Huineng,
said in his Platform Sutra,"Mind without dispute is self-nature
discipline, mind without disturbance is self-nature meditation, mind
without ignorance is self-nature wisdom." In Mahayana and esoteric buddhist lineages, Mañjuśrī is considered as an embodiment of Buddha wisdom.
In Hinduism, wisdom is considered a state of mind and soul where a person achieves liberation.
The god of wisdom is Ganesha and the goddess of knowledge is Saraswati.
The Sanskrit verse to attain knowledge is:
असतो मा सद्गमय । Asatō mā sadgamaya
तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय । tamasō mā jyōtirgamaya
मृत्योर्मा अमृतं गमय । mr̥tyōrmā amr̥taṁ gamaya
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥ Om śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ
- Br̥hadāraṇyakopaniṣat 1.3.28
Wisdom in Hinduism is knowing oneself as the truth, basis for the entire Creation, i.e., of Shristi. In other words, wisdom simply means a person with Self-awareness
as the one who witnesses the entire creation in all its facets and
forms. Further it means realization that an individual through right
conduct and right living over an unspecified period comes to realize
their true relationship with the creation and the Paramatma.
Islam
The Arabic term corresponding to Hebrew Chokmah is حكمةḥikma.
The term occurs a number of times in the Quran, notably in Sura 2:269:
"He
gives wisdom to whom He wills, and whoever has been given wisdom has
certainly been given much good. And none will remember except those of
understanding." (Quran2:269).
and Sura 22:46:
"Have they not travelled in the land, and have they hearts wherewith to
feel and ears wherewith to hear? For indeed it is not the eyes that
grow blind, but it is the hearts, which are within the bosoms, that grow
blind."Quran22:46Sura 6:
151: "Say: "Come, I will rehearse what Allah (God) hath (really)
prohibited you from": Join not anything as equal with Him; be good to
your parents; kill not your children on a plea of want;― We provide
sustenance for you and for them;― come not nigh to shameful deeds,
whether open or secret; take not life, which Allah hath made sacred,
except by way of justice and law: thus doth He command you, that ye may
learn wisdom" (Quran6:151).
The Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi considers al-Hakim ("The Wise") as one of the names of the Creator. Wisdom and truth, considered divine attributes, were concepts related and valued in the Islamic sciences and philosophy since their beginnings, and the first Arab philosopher, Al-Kindi says at the beginning of his book:
We must not be ashamed to admire
the truth or to acquire it, from wherever it comes. Even if it should
come from far-flung nations and foreign peoples, there is for the
student of truth nothing more important than the truth, nor is the truth
demeaned or diminished by the one who states or conveys it; no one is
demeaned by the truth, rather all are ennobled by it.
"Love of learning is akin to wisdom. To practice with vigor is akin
to humanity. To know to be shameful is akin to courage (zhi, ren, yong..
three of Mengzi's sprouts of virtue)."
Compare this with the Confucian classic Great Learning,
which begins with: "The Way of learning to be great consists in
manifesting the clear character, loving the people, and abiding in the
highest good." One can clearly see the correlation with the Roman virtue
prudence, especially if one interprets "clear character" as "clear conscience". (From Chan's Sources of Chinese Philosophy).
In Taoism, wisdom is construed as adherence to the Three Treasures (Taoism): charity, simplicity, and humility.
"He who knows other men is discerning [智]; he who knows himself is intelligent [明]." (知人者智,自知者明。Tao Te Ching 33)
Others
In Norse mythology, the god Odin
is especially known for his wisdom, often acquired through various
hardships and ordeals involving pain and self-sacrifice. In one instance
he plucked out an eye and offered it to Mímir, guardian of the well of knowledge and wisdom, in return for a drink from the well.
In another famous account, Odin hanged himself for nine nights from Yggdrasil, the World Tree that unites all the realms of existence, suffering from hunger and thirst and finally wounding himself with a spear until he gained the knowledge of runes for use in casting powerful magic. He was also able to acquire the mead of poetry from the giants, a drink of which could grant the power of a scholar or poet, for the benefit of gods and mortals alike.
In Baháʼí Faith
scripture, "The essence of wisdom is the fear of God, the dread of His
scourge and punishment, and the apprehension of His justice and decree." Wisdom is seen as a light, that casts away darkness, and "its dictates must be observed under all circumstances". One may obtain knowledge and wisdom through God, his Word, and his Divine Manifestation and the source of all learning is the knowledge of God.
In the Star Wars universe, wisdom is valued in the narrative of the films, in which George Lucas figured issues of spirituality and morals, recurrent in mythological and philosophical themes; one of his inspirations was Joseph Campbell's The Hero of a Thousand Faces. Master Yoda is generally considered a popular figure of wisdom, evoking the image of an "Oriental Monk", and he is frequently quoted, analogously to Chinese thinkers or Eastern sages in general. Psychologist D. W. Kreger's book "The Tao of Yoda" adapts the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching in relation to Yoda's thinking. Knowledge is canonically considered one of the pillars of the Jedi, which is also cited in the non-canon book The Jedi Path, and wisdom can serve as a tenet for Jediism. The Jedi Code also states: "Ignorance, yet knowledge." In a psychology populational study published by Grossmann and team in 2019, master Yoda is considered wiser than Spock, another fictional character (from the Star Trek series), due to his emodiversity trait, which was positively associated to wise reasoning in people:
"Yoda embraces his emotions and aims to achieve a balance between them.
Yoda is known to be emotionally expressive, to share a good joke with
others, but also to recognize sorrow and his past mistakes".
Deus ex machina in Euripides' Medea, performed in 2009 in Syracuse, Italy; the sun god sends a golden chariot to rescue Medea
Deus ex machina (/ˌdeɪəsɛksˈmækɪnə,-ˈmɑːk-/DAY-əs ex-MA(H)K-in-ə, Latin: [ˈdɛ.ʊs ɛks ˈmaːkʰɪnaː]; plural: dei ex machina; English ‘god from the machine’) is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. Its function can be to resolve an otherwise irresolvable plot situation, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or act as a comedic device.
Origin of the expression
Deus ex machina is a Latin calque from Greekἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός (apò mēkhanês theós) 'god from the machine'.
The term was coined from the conventions of ancient Greek theater,
where actors who were playing gods were brought onto stage using a
machine. The machine could be either a crane (mechane) used to lower actors from above or a riser which brought them up through a trapdoor. Aeschylus
introduced the idea, and it was used often to resolve the conflict and
conclude the drama. The device is associated mostly with Greek tragedy,
although it also appeared in comedies.
Ancient examples
Aeschylus used the device in his Eumenides, but it became an established stage machine with Euripides. More than half of Euripides' extant tragedies employ a deus ex machina in their resolution, and some critics claim that Euripides invented it, not Aeschylus. A frequently cited example is Euripides' Medea, in which the deus ex machina is a dragon-drawn chariot sent by the sun god, used to convey his granddaughter Medea away from her husband Jason to the safety of Athens. In Alcestis, the heroine agrees to give up her own life to spare the life of her husband Admetus. At the end, Heracles shows up and seizes Alcestis from Death, restoring her to life and to Admetus.
Aristophanes' play Thesmophoriazusae
parodies Euripides' frequent use of the crane by making Euripides
himself a character in the play and bringing him on stage by way of the mechane.
The device produced an immediate emotional response from Greek
audiences. They would have a feeling of wonder and astonishment at the
appearance of the gods, which would often add to the moral effect of the
drama.
Modern theatrical examples
Characters ascend into heaven to become gods at the end of the 1650 play Andromède
Shakespeare uses the device in As You Like It, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, and Cymbeline. John Gay uses it in The Beggar's Opera
where a character breaks the action and rewrites the ending as a
reprieve from hanging for MacHeath. During the politically turbulent
17th and 18th centuries, the deus ex machina was sometimes used to make a controversial thesis more palatable to the powers of the day. For example, in the final scene of Molière's Tartuffe, the heroes are saved from a terrible fate by an agent of the compassionate, all-seeing King Louis XIV — the same king who held Molière's career and livelihood in his hands.
Plot device
Aristotle was the first to use a Greek term equivalent to the Latin phrase deus ex machina to describe the technique as a device to resolve the plot of tragedies.
It is generally deemed undesirable in writing and often implies a lack
of creativity on the part of the author. The reasons for this are that
it does damage to the story's internal logic and is often so unlikely
that it challenges suspension of disbelief, allowing the author to conclude the story with an unlikely ending.
Examples
The Martians in H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds have destroyed everything in their path and apparently triumphed over humanity, but they are suddenly killed by bacteria. In the novel Lord of the Flies, a passing navy officer rescues the stranded children. William Golding called that a "gimmick", other critics view it as a deus ex machina.
The abrupt ending conveys the terrible fate that would have afflicted
the children if the officer had not arrived at that moment.
J. R. R. Tolkien referred to the Great Eagles that appear in several places in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as "a dangerous 'machine'". This was in a letter refusing permission to a film adapter to have the Fellowship of the Ring
transported by eagles rather than traveling on foot. He felt that the
eagles had already been overused as a plot device and they have
elsewhere been critiqued as a deus ex machina.
Charles Dickens used the device in Oliver Twist
when Rose Maylie turns out to be the long-lost sister of Agnes, and
therefore Oliver's aunt; she marries her long-time sweetheart Harry,
allowing Oliver to live happily with his saviour Mr. Brownlow.
Criticism
The deus ex machina
device is often criticized as inartistic, too convenient, and overly
simplistic. However, champions of the device say that it opens up
ideological and artistic possibilities.
Ancient criticism
Antiphanes was one of the device's earliest critics. He believed that the use of the deus ex machina was a sign that the playwright was unable to properly manage the complications of his plot.
when they don't know what to say
and have completely given up on the play
just like a finger they lift the machine
and the spectators are satisfied.
— Antiphanes
Another critical reference to the device can be found in Plato's dialogue Cratylus, 425d, though it is made in the context of an argument unrelated to drama.
Aristotle criticized the device in his Poetics, where he argued that the resolution of a plot must arise internally, following from previous action of the play:
In the characters, too, exactly as
in the structure of the incidents, [the poet] ought always to seek what
is either necessary or probable, so that it is either necessary or
probable that a person of such-and-such a sort say or do things of the
same sort, and it is either necessary or probable that this [incident]
happen after that one. It is obvious that the solutions of plots, too,
should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a
contrivance, as in the Medea and in the passage about sailing home in the Iliad.
A contrivance must be used for matters outside the drama — either
previous events, which are beyond human knowledge, or later ones that
need to be foretold or announced. For we grant that the gods can see
everything. There should be nothing improbable in the incidents;
otherwise, it should be outside the tragedy, e.g., that in Sophocles' Oedipus.
Aristotle praised Euripides, however, for generally ending his plays
with bad fortune, which he viewed as correct in tragedy, and somewhat
excused the intervention of a deity by suggesting that "astonishment"
should be sought in tragic drama:
Irrationalities should be referred
to what people say: That is one solution, and also sometimes that it is
not irrational, since it is probable that improbable things will happen.
Such a device was referred to by Horace in his Ars Poetica
(lines 191–2), where he instructs poets that they should never resort
to a "god from the machine" to resolve their plots "unless a difficulty
worthy of a god's unraveling should happen" [nec deus intersit, nisi dignus uindice nodus inciderit; nec quarta loqui persona laboret.
Modern criticism
Following Aristotle, Renaissance critics continued to view the deus ex machina as an inept plot device, although it continued to be employed by Renaissance dramatists.
Toward the end of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche criticized Euripides for making tragedy an optimistic genre
by use of the device, and was highly skeptical of the "Greek
cheerfulness", prompting what he viewed as the plays' "blissful delight
in life". The deus ex machina as Nietzsche saw it was symptomatic of Socratic culture, which valued knowledge over Dionysiac music and ultimately caused the death of tragedy:
But the new non-Dionysiac spirit is most clearly apparent in the endings
of the new dramas. At the end of the old tragedies there was a sense of
metaphysical conciliation without which it is impossible to imagine our
taking delight in tragedy; perhaps the conciliatory tones from another
world echo most purely in Oedipus at Colonus.
Now, once tragedy had lost the genius of music, tragedy in the
strictest sense was dead: for where was that metaphysical consolation
now to be found? Hence an earthly resolution for tragic dissonance was
sought; the hero, having been adequately tormented by fate, won his
well-earned reward in a stately marriage and tokens of divine honour.
The hero had become a gladiator, granted freedom once he had been
satisfactorily flayed and scarred. Metaphysical consolation had been
ousted by the deus ex machina.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche argued that the deus ex machina creates a false sense of consolation that ought not to be sought in phenomena. His denigration of the plot device has prevailed in critical opinion.
In Arthur Woollgar Verrall's publication Euripides the Rationalist
(1895), he surveyed and recorded other late 19th-century responses to
the device. He recorded that some of the critical responses to the term
referred to it as 'burlesque', 'coup de théâtre', and 'catastrophe'.
Verrall notes that critics have a dismissive response to authors who
deploy the device in their writings. He comes to the conclusion that
critics feel that the deus ex machina is evidence of the author's attempt to ruin the whole of his work and prevent anyone from putting any importance on his work.
However, other scholars have looked at Euripides' use of deus ex machina
and described its use as an integral part of the plot designed for a
specific purpose. Often, Euripides' plays would begin with gods, so it
is argued that it would be natural for the gods to finish the action.
The conflict throughout Euripides' plays would be caused by the meddling
of the gods, so would make sense to both the playwright and the
audience of the time that the gods would resolve all conflict that they
began. Half of Euripides' eighteen extant plays end with the use of deus ex machina,
therefore it was not simply a device to relieve the playwright of the
embarrassment of a confusing plot ending. This device enabled him to
bring about a natural and more dignified dramatic and tragic ending.
Other champions of the device believe that it can be a
spectacular agent of subversion. It can be used to undercut generic
conventions and challenge cultural assumptions and the privileged role
of tragedy as a literary/theatrical model.
Some 20th-century revisionist criticism suggests that deus ex machina
cannot be viewed in these simplified terms, and contends that the
device allows mortals to "probe" their relationship with the divine. Rush Rehm in particular cites examples of Greek tragedy in which the deus ex machina
complicates the lives and attitudes of characters confronted by the
deity, while simultaneously bringing the drama home to its audience. Sometimes, the unlikeliness of the deus ex machina plot device is employed deliberately. For example, comic effect is created in a scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian when Brian, who lives in Judea at the time of Christ, is saved from a high fall by a passing alien space ship.
Detail depicting Averroes, who addressed the omnipotence paradox in the 12th century, from the 14th-century Triunfo de Santo Tomás by Andrea da Firenze (di Bonaiuto)
The omnipotence paradox is a family of paradoxes that arise with some understandings of the term omnipotent.
The paradox arises, for example, if one assumes that an omnipotent
being has no limits and is capable of realizing any outcome, even
logically contradictory one such as creating a square circle. A
no-limits understanding of omnipotence such as this has been rejected by
theologians from Thomas Aquinas to contemporary philosophers of religion, such as Alvin Plantinga. Atheological arguments based on the omnipotence paradox are sometimes described as evidence for atheism, though Christian theologians and philosophers, such as Norman Geisler and William Lane Craig,
contend that a no-limits understanding of omnipotence is not relevant
to orthodox Christian theology. Other possible resolutions to the
paradox hinge on the definition of omnipotence applied and the nature of
God regarding this application and whether omnipotence is directed
toward God himself or outward toward his external surroundings.
The omnipotence paradox has medieval origins, dating at least to the 12th century. It was addressed by Averroës and later by Thomas Aquinas. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (before 532) has a predecessor version of the paradox, asking whether it is possible for God to "deny himself".
The most well-known version of the omnipotence paradox is the so-called paradox of the stone: "Could God create a stone so heavy that even He could not lift it?" This phrasing of the omnipotence paradox is vulnerable to objections based on the physical nature of gravity, such as how the weight
of an object depends on what the local gravitational field is.
Alternative statements of the paradox that do not involve such
difficulties include "If given the axioms of Euclidean geometry, can an
omnipotent being create a triangle whose angles do not add up to 180
degrees?" and "Can God create a prison so secure that he cannot escape
from it?".
Overview
A
common modern version of the omnipotence paradox is expressed in the
question: "Can [an omnipotent being] create a stone so heavy that it
cannot lift it?" This question generates a dilemma. The being can either
create a stone it cannot lift, or it cannot create a stone it cannot
lift. If the being can create a stone that it cannot lift, then
it is not omnipotent because there is a weight threshold beyond its own
power to lift. If the being cannot create a stone it cannot
lift, then there is something it cannot create, and is therefore not
omnipotent. In either case, the being is not omnipotent.
A related issue is whether the concept of "logically possible" is
different for a world in which omnipotence exists than a world in which
omnipotence does not exist.
The dilemma of omnipotence is similar to another classic paradox—the irresistible force paradox:
"What would happen if an irresistible force were to meet an immovable
object?" One response to this paradox is to disallow its formulation, by
saying that if a force is irresistible, then by definition there is no
immovable object; or conversely, if an immovable object exists, then by
definition no force can be irresistible. Some claim
that the only way out of this paradox is if the irresistible force and
immovable object never meet. But this is not a way out, because an
object cannot in principle be immovable if a force exists that can in
principle move it, regardless of whether the force and the object
actually meet.
Types of omnipotence
Peter Geach describes and rejects four levels of omnipotence. He also defines and defends a lesser notion of the "almightiness" of God.
"Y is absolutely omnipotent" means that "Y" can do anything that can be expressed in a string of words even if it is self-contradictory: "Y" is not bound by the laws of logic."
"Y is omnipotent" means "Y can do X" is true if and only if X is a logically consistent description of a state of affairs. This position was once advocated by Thomas Aquinas.
This definition of omnipotence solves some of the paradoxes associated
with omnipotence, but some modern formulations of the paradox still work
against this definition. Let X = "to make something that its maker
cannot lift." As Mavrodes points out, there is nothing logically contradictory about this. A man could, for example, make a boat that he could not lift.
"Y is omnipotent" means "Y can do X" is true if and only if
"Y does X" is logically consistent. Here the idea is to exclude actions
that are inconsistent for Y to do but might be consistent for others.
Again sometimes it looks as if Aquinas takes this position.
Here Mavrodes' worry about X= "to make something its maker cannot lift"
is no longer a problem, because "God does X" is not logically
consistent. However, this account may still have problems with moral
issues like X = "tells a lie" or temporal issues like X = "brings it
about that Rome was never founded."
"Y is omnipotent" means whenever "Y will bring about X" is
logically possible, then "Y can bring about X" is true. This sense, also
does not allow the paradox of omnipotence to arise, and unlike
definition #3 avoids any temporal worries about whether an omnipotent
being could change the past. However, Geach criticizes even this sense
of omnipotence as misunderstanding the nature of God's promises.
"Y is almighty" means that Y is not just more powerful than any creature; no creature can compete with Y in power, even unsuccessfully.
In this account nothing like the omnipotence paradox arises, but
perhaps that is because God is not taken to be in any sense omnipotent.
On the other hand, Anselm of Canterbury seems to think that almightiness is one of the things that make God count as omnipotent.
Augustine of Hippo in his City of God writes "God is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills" and thus proposes the definition that "Y is omnipotent" means "If Y wishes to do X then Y can and does do X".
The notion of omnipotence can also be applied to an entity in different ways. An essentially omnipotent being is an entity that is necessarily omnipotent. In contrast, an accidentally omnipotent
being is an entity that can be omnipotent for a temporary period of
time, and then becomes non-omnipotent. The omnipotence paradox can be
applied to each type of being differently.
Some Philosophers, such as René Descartes, argue that God is absolutely omnipotent. In addition, some philosophers have considered the assumption that a being is either omnipotent or non-omnipotent to be a false dilemma, as it neglects the possibility of varying degrees of omnipotence. Some modern approaches to the problem have involved semantic debates over whether language—and therefore philosophy—can meaningfully address the concept of omnipotence itself.
Proposed answers
Omnipotence does not mean breaking the laws of logic
A common response from Christian philosophers, such as Norman Geisler or William Lane Craig, is that the paradox assumes a wrong definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence, they say, does not mean that God can do anything at all but, rather, that he can do anything that is possible according to his nature.
The distinction is important. God cannot perform logical absurdities;
he cannot, for instance, make 1+1=3. Likewise, God cannot make a being
greater than himself because he is, by definition, the greatest possible
being. God is limited in his actions to his nature. The Bible supports
this, they assert, in passages such as Hebrews 6:18, which says it is
"impossible for God to lie."
Another common response to the omnipotence paradox is to try to define
omnipotence to mean something weaker than absolute omnipotence, such as
definition 3 or 4 above. The paradox can be resolved by simply
stipulating that omnipotence does not require that the being have
abilities that are logically impossible, but only be able to do anything
that conforms to the laws of logic. A good example of a modern defender
of this line of reasoning is George Mavrodes.
Essentially, Mavrodes argues that it is no limitation on a being's
omnipotence to say that it cannot make a round square. Such a "task" is
termed by him a "pseudo-task" as it is self-contradictory and inherently
nonsense. Harry Frankfurt—following
from Descartes—has responded to this solution with a proposal of his
own: that God can create a stone impossible to lift and also lift said
stone
For why should God not be able to perform the
task in question? To be sure, it is a task—the task of lifting a stone
which He cannot lift—whose description is self-contradictory. But if God
is supposed capable of performing one task whose description is
self-contradictory—that of creating the problematic stone in the first
place—why should He not be supposed capable of performing another—that
of lifting the stone? After all, is there any greater trick in
performing two logically impossible tasks than there is in performing
one?
If a being is accidentally omnipotent, it can resolve the
paradox by creating a stone it cannot lift, thereby becoming
non-omnipotent. Unlike essentially omnipotent entities, it is possible
for an accidentally omnipotent being to be non-omnipotent. This raises
the question, however, of whether the being was ever truly omnipotent,
or just capable of great power.
On the other hand, the ability to voluntarily give up great power is
often thought of as central to the notion of the Christian Incarnation.
If a being is essentially omnipotent, then it can also
resolve the paradox (as long as we take omnipotence not to require
absolute omnipotence). The omnipotent being is essentially omnipotent,
and therefore it is impossible for it to be non-omnipotent. Further, the
omnipotent being can do what is logically impossible—just like the
accidentally omnipotent—and have no limitations except the inability to
become non-omnipotent. The omnipotent being cannot create a stone it
cannot lift.
The omnipotent being cannot create such a stone because its power is
equal to itself—thus, removing the omnipotence, for there can only be
one omnipotent being, but it nevertheless retains its omnipotence. This
solution works even with definition 2—as long as we also know the being
is essentially omnipotent rather than accidentally so. However, it is
possible for non-omnipotent beings to compromise their own powers, which
presents the paradox that non-omnipotent beings can do something (to
themselves) which an essentially omnipotent being cannot do (to itself).
This was essentially the position Augustine of Hippo took in his The City of God:
For
He is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills, not on
account of His suffering what He wills not; for if that should befall
Him, He would by no means be omnipotent. Wherefore, He cannot do some
things for the very reason that He is omnipotent.
Thus Augustine argued that God could not do anything or create any situation that would, in effect, make God not God.
In a 1955 article in the philosophy journal Mind, J. L. Mackie
tried to resolve the paradox by distinguishing between first-order
omnipotence (unlimited power to act) and second-order omnipotence
(unlimited power to determine what powers to act things shall have).
An omnipotent being with both first and second-order omnipotence at a
particular time might restrict its own power to act and, henceforth,
cease to be omnipotent in either sense. There has been considerable
philosophical dispute since Mackie, as to the best way to formulate the
paradox of omnipotence in formal logic.
God and logic
Although the most common translation of the noun "Logos" is
"Word" other translations have been used. Gordon Clark (1902–1985), a
Calvinist theologian and expert on pre-Socratic philosophy, famously
translated Logos as "Logic": "In the beginning was the Logic, and the
Logic was with God and the Logic was God." He meant to imply by this
translation that the laws of logic were derived from God and formed part
of Creation, and were therefore not a secular principle imposed on the
Christian world view.
God obeys the laws of logic because God is
eternally logical in the same way that God does not perform evil actions
because God is eternally good. So, God, by nature logical and unable to
violate the laws of logic, cannot make a boulder so heavy he cannot
lift it because that would violate the law of non contradiction by creating an immovable object and an unstoppable force.
This raises the question, similar to the Euthyphro Dilemma, of where this law of logic, which God is bound to obey, comes from. According to these theologians (Norman Geisler and William Lane Craig), this law is not a law above God that he assents to but, rather, logic is an eternal part of God's nature, like his omniscience or omnibenevolence.
Paradox is meaningless: the question is sophistry
Another
common response is that since God is supposedly omnipotent, the phrase
"could not lift" does not make sense and the paradox is meaningless.
This may mean that the complexity involved in rightly understanding
omnipotence—contra all the logical details involved in misunderstanding
it—is a function of the fact that omnipotence, like infinity, is
perceived at all by contrasting reference to those complex and variable
things, which it is not. An alternative meaning, however, is that
a non-corporeal God cannot lift anything, but can raise it (a
linguistic pedantry)—or to use the beliefs of Hindus (that there is one
God, who can be manifest as several different beings) that whilst it is
possible for God to do all things, it is not possible for all his
incarnations to do them. As such, God could create a stone so heavy
that, in one incarnation, he could not lift it, yet could do something
that an incarnation that could lift the stone could not.
The lifting a rock paradox (Can God lift a stone larger than he can carry?)
uses human characteristics to cover up the main skeletal structure of
the question. With these assumptions made, two arguments can stem from
it:
Lifting covers up the definition of translation, which means moving something from one point in space to another. With this in mind, the real question would be, "Can God move a rock from one location in space to another that is larger than possible?"
For the rock to be unable to move from one space to another, it would
have to be larger than space itself. However, it is impossible for a
rock to be larger than space, as space always adjusts itself to cover
the space of the rock. If the supposed rock was out of space-time
dimension, then the question would not make sense—because it would be
impossible to move an object from one location in space to another if
there is no space to begin with, meaning the faulting is with the logic
of the question and not God's capabilities.
The words, "Lift a Stone" are used instead to substitute capability.
With this in mind, essentially the question is asking if God is
incapable, so the real question would be, "Is God capable of being incapable?"
If God is capable of being incapable, it means that He is incapable,
because He has the potential to not be able to do something. Conversely,
if God is incapable of being incapable, then the two inabilities cancel
each other out, making God have the capability to do something.
The act of killing oneself is not applicable to an omnipotent being,
since, despite that such an act does involve some power, it also
involves a lack of power: the human person who can kill himself
is already not indestructible, and, in fact, every agent constituting
his environment is more powerful in some ways than himself. In other
words, all non-omnipotent agents are concretely synthetic:
constructed as contingencies of other, smaller, agents, meaning that
they, unlike an omnipotent agent, logically can exist not only in
multiple instantiation (by being constructed out of the more basic
agents they are made of), but are each bound to a different location in
space contra transcendent omnipresence.
Thomas Aquinas
asserts that the paradox arises from a misunderstanding of omnipotence.
He maintains that inherent contradictions and logical impossibilities
do not fall under the omnipotence of God. J. L Cowan sees this paradox as a reason to reject the concept of 'absolute' omnipotence, while others, such as René Descartes, argue that God is absolutely omnipotent, despite the problem.
C. S. Lewis
argues that when talking about omnipotence, referencing "a rock so
heavy that God cannot lift it" is nonsense just as much as referencing
"a square circle"; that it is not logically coherent in terms of power
to think that omnipotence includes the power to do the logically
impossible. So asking "Can God create a rock so heavy that even he
cannot lift it?" is just as much nonsense as asking "Can God draw a
square circle?" The logical contradiction here being God's simultaneous
ability and disability in lifting the rock: the statement "God can lift
this rock" must have a truth value of either true or false, it cannot
possess both. This is justified by observing that for the omnipotent
agent to create such a stone, it must already be more powerful than
itself: such a stone is too heavy for the omnipotent agent to lift, but
the omnipotent agent already can create such a stone; If an omnipotent
agent already is more powerful than itself, then it already is just that
powerful. This means that its power to create a stone that is too heavy
for it to lift is identical to its power to lift that very stone. While
this does not quite make complete sense, Lewis wished to stress its
implicit point: that even within the attempt to prove that the concept
of omnipotence is immediately incoherent, one admits that it is
immediately coherent, and that the only difference is that this attempt
is forced to admit this despite that the attempt is constituted by a
perfectly irrational route to its own unwilling end, with a perfectly
irrational set of 'things' included in that end.
In other words, the 'limit' on what omnipotence 'can' do is not a limit on its actual agency, but an epistemological boundary without which omnipotence could not be identified (paradoxically or otherwise) in the first place. In fact, this process is merely a fancier form of the classic Liar Paradox:
If I say, "I am a liar", then how can it be true if I am telling the
truth therewith, and, if I am telling the truth therewith, then how can I
be a liar? So, to think that omnipotence is an epistemological
paradox is like failing to recognize that, when taking the statement, 'I
am a liar' self-referentially, the statement is reduced to an actual
failure to lie. In other words, if one maintains the supposedly
'initial' position that the necessary conception of omnipotence includes
the 'power' to compromise both itself and all other identity, and if
one concludes from this position that omnipotence is epistemologically
incoherent, then one implicitly is asserting that one's own 'initial'
position is incoherent. Therefore, the question (and therefore the
perceived paradox) is meaningless. Nonsense does not suddenly acquire
sense and meaning with the addition of the two words, "God can" before
it.
Lewis additionally said that, "Unless something is self-evident,
nothing can be proved." This implies for the debate on omnipotence that,
as in matter, so in the human understanding of truth: it takes no
true insight to destroy a perfectly integrated structure, and the effort
to destroy has greater effect than an equal effort to build; so, a man
is thought a fool who assumes its integrity, and thought an abomination
who argues for it. It is easier to teach a fish to swim in outer space
than to convince a room full of ignorant fools why it cannot be done.
Language and omnipotence
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein
is frequently interpreted as arguing that language is not up to the
task of describing the kind of power an omnipotent being would have. In
his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he stays generally within the realm of logical positivism until claim 6.4—but at 6.41 and following, he argues that ethics
and several other issues are "transcendental" subjects that we cannot
examine with language. Wittgenstein also mentions the will, life after
death, and God—arguing that, "When the answer cannot be put into words,
neither can the question be put into words."
Wittgenstein's work expresses the omnipotence paradox as a problem in semantics—the
study of how we give symbols meaning. (The retort "That's only
semantics," is a way of saying that a statement only concerns the
definitions of words, instead of anything important in the physical
world.) According to the Tractatus, then, even attempting to
formulate the omnipotence paradox is futile, since language cannot refer
to the entities the paradox considers. The final proposition of the Tractatus gives Wittgenstein's dictum for these circumstances: "What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence".
Wittgenstein's approach to these problems is influential among other 20th century religious thinkers such as D. Z. Phillips. In his later years, however, Wittgenstein wrote works often interpreted as conflicting with his positions in the Tractatus, and indeed the later Wittgenstein is mainly seen as the leading critic of the early Wittgenstein.
Other versions of the paradox
In the 6th century, Pseudo-Dionysius
claims that a version of the omnipotence paradox constituted the
dispute between Paul the Apostle and Elymas the Magician mentioned in Acts 13:8, but it is phrased in terms of a debate as to whether God can "deny himself" ala 2 Tim 2:13. In the 11th century, Anselm of Canterbury argues that there are many things that God cannot do, but that nonetheless he counts as omnipotent.
Thomas Aquinas
advanced a version of the omnipotence paradox by asking whether God
could create a triangle with internal angles that did not add up to 180
degrees. As Aquinas put it in Summa contra Gentiles:
Since the principles of certain
sciences, such as logic, geometry and arithmetic are taken only from the
formal principles of things, on which the essence of the thing depends,
it follows that God could not make things contrary to these principles.
For example, that a genus was not predicable of the species, or that
lines drawn from the centre to the circumference were not equal, or that
a triangle did not have three angles equal to two right angles.
This can be done on a sphere, and not on a flat surface. The later invention of non-Euclidean geometry does not resolve this question; for one might as well ask, "If given the axioms of Riemannian geometry, can an omnipotent being create a triangle whose angles do not add up to more
than 180 degrees?" In either case, the real question is whether an
omnipotent being would have the ability to evade consequences that
follow logically from a system of axioms that the being created.
A version of the paradox can also be seen in non-theological contexts. A similar problem occurs when accessing legislative or parliamentary sovereignty,
which holds a specific legal institution to be omnipotent in legal
power, and in particular such an institution's ability to regulate
itself.
In a sense, the classic statement of the omnipotence paradox — a
rock so heavy that its omnipotent creator cannot lift it — is grounded
in Aristotelian
science. After all, if we consider the stone's position relative to the
sun the planet orbits around, one could hold that the stone is constantly
lifted—strained though that interpretation would be in the present
context. Modern physics indicates that the choice of phrasing about
lifting stones should relate to acceleration; however, this does not in
itself of course invalidate the fundamental concept of the generalized
omnipotence paradox. However, one could easily modify the classic
statement as follows: "An omnipotent being creates a universe
that follows the laws of Aristotelian physics. Within this universe,
can the omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that the being cannot
lift it?"
Ethan Allen's Reason addresses the topics of original sin, theodicy and several others in classic Enlightenment fashion.
In Chapter 3, section IV, he notes that "omnipotence itself" could not
exempt animal life from mortality, since change and death are defining
attributes of such life. He argues, "the one cannot be without the
other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains
without valleys, or that I could exist and not exist at the same time,
or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature." Labeled by
his friends a Deist, Allen accepted the notion of a divine being, though throughout Reason he argues that even a divine being must be circumscribed by logic.
In Principles of Philosophy,Descartes
tried refuting the existence of atoms with a variation of this
argument, claiming God could not create things so indivisible that he
could not divide them.