Q&A: God Is Bound
God Is Bound
Question
Good evening,
I read somewhere in one of your articles that “in the view of many, God is certainly bound by the laws of logic, even if not by the laws of nature.”
Could you clarify the nature of that “being bound”? After all, the laws of logic themselves were created by God.
Perhaps His being bound by them was created by His own will, like the possibility of choice (a deliberate self-limitation of His abilities)?
If you have already written an article on the subject, I would also be glad for references.
Answer
Hello,
First of all, apologies for the delay. For some reason I hadn’t seen the question until now.
As for the matter itself, I discussed this in my book Two Carts, in Gate 13. Briefly, I would say that the laws of logic are not “laws” in the same sense as the laws of physics, and certainly not like the laws of the state. The laws of the state and the laws of physics were enacted by someone. They could have been otherwise. That is not the case with the laws of logic. They could not have been otherwise. Therefore, “laws of logic” is an unsuccessful and misleading expression. The claim that if every X is Y and a is X, then a is Y is not a logical law. It is simply reality, and it cannot be otherwise. God too cannot make a round triangle, because there simply is not, and cannot be, such a thing. It is a self-contradictory concept. Therefore, when people say that He is “bound” by the laws of logic, that is a borrowed expression. He does not deviate from the laws of logic because there is no such thing as deviating from them.
Think about the question of whether God can turn Himself into a human being. Seemingly He is omnipotent, so He can. But then I could shoot Him in the head and kill Him. If He does not die, then He did not really turn into a human being, because a human being who is shot in the head dies. And if He really does die, then necessary existence is no longer present in reality, which is an oxymoron. The meaning of this is that He truly cannot turn Himself into a human being. Because necessary existence cannot at the same time be contingent existence—that is, mortal. This is a logical contradiction. That is also the solution to the problem of the stone He cannot lift, and the like.