From: Michael Sudduth <msudduth@ix.netcom.com>

Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 11:17:03 -0400

Subject: The Nature of Causality (Ad W----)

W----,

Thanks for the Berkhof quote.

I should initially clarify one point. I may have given the impression that no Reformed theologian has maintained that regeneration is temporally prior to faith. Most of them do go the "logical relation" route. Many of them also maintain that the relation is causal. But they don't really explain it anymore than that. James P. Boyce, however, (a Baptist too) in his *Systematic Theology* said that regeneration is temporally prior to faith, and I think for the same reasons that I was suggesting. So the temporal relation view has been advocated by some Calvinists.

[W-----]

However, *if* you are still an advocate of divine timelessness, wouldn't you have to adopt a model of the (timeless) creation of the temporal universe? I know how Paul Helm explains

it:

'To say that a timeless being produces (timelessly) the universe is to say at least the following things:

(i) that the universe is logically contingent and would not have come into being if God had not willed so;

(ii) the universe has temporal development.

[Michael] Yes, as I was writing my post I was fully aware of this point. I knew you would bring it up. <grin> I suppose we could do a few things to clean this up.

(1) First, Swinburne's argument about the temporal priority of causes to their effects almost persuades me to be a temporalist, especially the more that time goes by. So perhaps we could stress the *if* above. But I'd have to think through the implications of this move (more than I have :) ), especially given the other options available. I suppose I was operating more on the intuitive appeal of a certain logic of causality when the cause is itself in time (more on that below).

(2) Second, and as an example of one of those other options, I continue to think of the exercise of God's causal power as sui generis. I would advocate a strong analogical sense to propositions that describe God's causal activity. In fact, when I discuss divine timelessness, I nowhere use the word "simultaneous" to describe God's causal relation to the created order. There remains a strong a negative theological orientation to my thinking about God.

(3) You are correct, of course, when you say that this, move in (2), should open the "logical possibility" of causes not being temporally prior to their effects. I don't think anything I said denied the "logical possibility" of it (my references to logical impossibilities where in relation to some entailments of specific things that K---- said, one sentence in particular that sounded self-contradictory to me). The real question is whether we have reason to suppose that temporal causes are temporally prior to their effects.

(4) Related to (3), I carefully crafted my post to refer explicitly to causes and effects where *both* are in the created order. You seem to suggest something like this too, as at least favoring the temporal priority of regeneration to faith. I was mainly concerned with the logic of causality when the cause in question is in time. That may be a different ballgame than when the cause is, ex hypothesis, timeless. Ultimately, however, we (or should I say, I) would have to show that (a) a temporal cause not being temporally prior to its effect *is* subject to Swinburne's argument, and (b) a timeless cause not being temporally prior to its effects *is not* vulnerable to Swinburne's argument. This can be handled from two angles I suppose, both of which address Swinburne's argument.

[Note to list participants: I will post Swinburne's argument later for your interest]

We could ask whether Hume's "anything can cause anything" principle is true when applied to God. This is a necessary premise to Swinburne's argument. Or we could ask whether there is independent reason to suppose that divine timeless causality rules out the possibility of A causing not-A. After all, this is the absurd result that must be avoided. It can be avoided I think only if the Humean principle is not true in relation to God's causal power or if there is a reason that undercuts the reductio ad absurdum from that principle (if it is applicable to God) and the negation of the temporal priority of causes to their effects.

Hence, since I think one of the two considerations above will have some force, my official position is that Swinburne's argument is correct only for the relation between causes and effects when the cause is, ex hypothesis, in time and not a divine cause. Thanks for bringing this up.

Hope I have clarified my thinking. An Oxford education, if it does anything, should persuade one of the importance of logical consistency. :)

[W------]

Why cannot we apply a similar model to regeneration? My faith/repentance is logically contingent and would not have come into being if God had not willed so. And my faith/repentance has a temporal character.

[Michael] Hmmm. W----, is this a minor slip up or did I miss something. Presumably the example is intended to be an application of Helm's idea of divine causality to regeneration as a cause of faith such that regeneration is not temporally prior to faith. What you say is no doubt true. And it

might very well be an account of what it means to say that God causes faith and repentance, but I don't see that what you say entails that regeneration causes faith.

If you apply Helm's model of causality to the question at hand, faith is the effect and regeneraton is the cause, so regeneration causes faith means the conjunction of (a) the exercise (or disposition) of faith is logically contingent and (b) if a person had not been regenerated, then the person would not have had faith. (and of course both the cause and effect are in time).

BTW, I do have some worries about whether this sufficiently captures the idea of causality.

This is, of course, logically consistent with regeneration being temporally prior to faith, as say a condition (c). The reason why this isn't added in the first place on the Helmian model is because Helm is trying to explain how a timeless being can be a cause, but regeneration is not a timeless

cause. It is a temporal event, even if it caused by a timeless God. We are trying to relate two temporal causes, and as I said above, it seems plausible to suppose, for reasons I suggested, that there is a different logic operational there (though clearly the logical possibility remains).

Moreover, in my post I stressed an analogical argument, namely that in the created order (and especially in the examples other cited) causes are temporally prior to their effects. Keith suggested "gear A simultaneously causing gear B to move," but - as I will explain in my response to him - the example is not a good one since the movements in question are not, strictly speaking, "simultaneous" even though in ordinary language we might use the word simultaneous to describe the event. This reminds me of the example of an indentation in a cushion that is allegedly simultaneous with a person's butt applying pressure to the cushion. But, no pun intended, to maintain that causes are temporally prior to their effects is consistent with the interval between them being quite short (very, very short) and possibly undetectable by us, or at least not obviously detectable by us.

[W----]

I'm not advocating this view, just suggesting it as a way of showing that it is not *obviously* true that the relation between regeneration and faith *must* be temporal. In the end, however, I would probably advocate the temporal view (*in addition to* the 'logically explanatory' view), because the biblical texts themselves seem to clearly speak of regeneration as an event in time.

[Michael] Apparently, we are thinking along similar lines.

Michael

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