Who is God's God? God.

. . . the Father is also the Father's God. He is his own God just as Bush is his own President

I'm not sure Bush is his own President. He can't pardon himself, for instance, though he can pardon others. But maybe that isn't crucial to the point you're making. It seems to me, though, more difficult to see that the Father is His own God.
It's no doubt true that, if G is the god of S, then S might worship G? But could G worship himself--I mean without a really tortured concept of worship? I don't deny that G could find himself a worthy object of worship. Certainly G has the authority (what more could you have?) to command S to do A. But can we make sense of G commanding G to A? Hard to see.

Hey Trent!

Hope your summer's off to a good start. If you stick with the NT, you'll see Jesus worshiping, praying, and all-around submitting to the Father, but never the other way around. (Not to mention calling the Father his god, and the one true god.)

I think Mike is right... Here are a few quick thoughts. The president is a top-dog position. He's a citizen of a country which has a president, but he doesn't seem to have one, as he's not under the authority of one. Rather, he's (in Bush's lovely phrase) the Decider.

"god" is a little different - it's like the term or title "leader" or "boss" in that it can be used in a non-absolute way, where there are levels of dominion - gods with gods over them. Indeed, the Bible repeatedly uses "god" this way. (e.g. Satan) But when used of the God of the OT, it's used in a top-dog way. His uniqueness is strongly emphasized - no one can advise him or overpower him, etc. And if we think God necessarily exists and is necessarily the greatest in every possible world (note - we needn't commit the concept of a greatest possible being), won't it be necessarily false that there's a being (numerically distinct from himself) which counts as God's god? (I take it that his godhood would supervene on his essential characteristics and his being a free creator, or something like that.)

You can describe a person as being a "god to himself" - but this is a way of saying that he doesn't recognize God's legit authority over him - this person acts and thinks as if he, like God, had no god over him.

What do you think?

The Supreme Court doesn't have to treat its precedents as binding in the same way that lower courts have to (but all of the justices except Thomas treat precedent as having some relevance for any case before them, differing only in terms of the degree of importance they place on precedent). Still, if Justice Breyer as a private citizen breaks a law that the Supreme Court declared binding he has broken the law. He is in this sense a member of the final judicial panel that is over him.

The only difference with the executive branch is that the president is one person. If he issues an executive order about a certain practice, he does have the authority to remove the order or replace it with a contrary one. However, while the order is in place it is binding on him. He is thus under the president's authority, although he is also the president who can change dictates issued by that authority.

It's even more clear that he's under his own authority with things he can't later change as easily, e.g. laws Congress passes that he signs. He can't later unsign them or veto them. He'd have to introduce further legislation and get Congress to approve it before it could take effect. He also has to submit to decisions that judges or Supreme Court justices he's appointed may have been the deciding vote(s) on, and the only thing he can do about that is wait for further opportunities to appoint further judges and hope that a higher court or later ruling will overturn it.

As for pardoning, there are lots of powers someone might have that are limited. The fact that he can't pardon himself isn't evidence that he's not his own president. He also can't appoint himself vice-president if the vice-president dies or resigns, but I don't see how being exempt or prohibited from being the recipient of a certain power of the president means he's not his own president. It just means he doesn't have a president who can do that one thing for him (e.g. pardoning him, appointing him vice-president, etc.). I don't have a president who could appoint me vice-president (I'm not old enough), and neither does my wife (she's a naturalized citizen), but it doesn't mean Bush isn't my president or hers. It just means there's a certain presidential power that we can't be beneficiaries of.

Bush presumably did vote for himself for president, and therefore he presumably got the president he voted for. Thus he has the president representing him that he wanted representing him. I think that's a good enough reason to consider him his own president.

Nice.

We might reasonably describe an atheist who believes in his Kantian autonomy as "his own God." If so, then for a very similar reason we can describe God as his own God.

It is a good question why it is that when Jesus as man prays and submits, it is specifically to the Father. While submitting to the will of the Father is extensionally the same as submitting to the divine will of the Son, since the Father's will is numerically identical with the Son's divine will. But in submitting as man to the divine will under the description "the Father's divine will", I think Christ is also imaging in the flesh the fact that all he has as a person is from the Father, that he is God begotten and not God begetting. His human worship of the Father is the incarnation of his reciprocation of the Father's divine love.

I don't see how being exempt or prohibited from being the recipient of a certain power of the president means he's not his own president.

Maybe I can help. Taken as a citizen, the President qualifies as much as any other citizen for Presidential pardon. The only reason he is not qualified for a Presidential pardon is the fact that he is President. If he did not qualify for the pardon as a citizen (as you don't qualify for v.p. as a citizen) then, obviously, that would be no reason to deny that he is his own President. But this is not the case here. So, once again, to be clear, we might put the argument this way.

1. If Bush, because he is President, cannot exercise certain presidential powers over himself that he otherwise, as a citizen, fully qualifies for, then just being President precludes Bush from exercising full Presidential powers over himself.

2. Bush, because he is President, cannot exercise certain presidential powers over himself that he otherwise, as a citizen, fully qualifies for.

3.:. Just being President precludes Bush from exercising full Presidential powers over himself. (1,2, MP)

4. If just being President precludes Bush from exercising full Presidential powers over himself, then Bush is not his own President.

5.:. Bush is not his own President. (3,4 MP)

Dear Mike,

Some powers may be essential to being president and some not. Suppose that a constitutional amendment is passed according to which a presidential veto made on a Friday the 13th during a full moon cannot be overridden. It seems that the office of president before and after the passing of the amendment is the same office. If this is right, then not all the powers of a president are essential to one's being president.

It seems plausible that the power of pardons is not essential to being president. After all, imagine that a constitutional amendment barred the president from giving pardons to persons who had made large donations to his political party. (Not such a bad idea!) If x were president while this was being passed, we would want to say, I think, that x has the same office after the passage of this as before.

It seems to me that essential to being a US president is having a veto role in legislation and having a role in various appointments to public office. The legislation, however, is binding on him, and the persons appointed (e.g., supreme court justices) serve him just as much as they serve any other member of the public. Thus in this regard, he seems to be his own president.

Interesting, we seem to have a clash of intuitions here. It seems *clear* to me that G.W. Bush has a President because he's a US Citizen and the Prez is the Prez of all US Citizans.

I also see no problem with God worshiping Himself. In fact I just assumed he did. I hate to evoke such bad company, but I'm sure some Calvinists take this as an axiom. I think that Piper guys says this. It seems a bit odd perhaps, but He's God, there's going to be lots of stuff that wouldn't be appropriate for creatures to do. I'm under the impression that the Augustinian/Thomist line is the same as the Calvinist one here. Oh, the Piper book might be _The Pleasures of God_ or something like that.

If God can't command Himself to do things--I don't know whether He can or not--then I think that would just be an instance of a more general fact about self-authority.

gotta go

Oh, and since Mike was nice enough to provide an argument it would be rude of me not to mention that it's Premise 4 that I deny.

Cya

Some powers may be essential to being president and some not.

Alex, I agree entirely. That's why I concluded that Bush is not his own president rather than Bush cannot be his own president. I don't think I want (or need), for the purposes of this discussion, to argue that Bush is not his own president on any possible set of powers that might be afforded that office. That discussion would involve the impossibly messy chore of individuating the office of president through all possible profiles of powers. No thanks.

Trent,

. . . it's Premise 4 that I deny.

Is there a reason I should deny it, too?

Mike, surely premise 4 is false. He can't exercise full presidential powers over me, and he's my president.
Alex's example about pardons for donors of large gifts is even more to the point. Those aren't strictly speaking counterexamples to premise 4, but it seems to me that they should be counterexamples to whatever principle is supposed to support premise 4. Do you have any such principle in mind that is both plausible and not undermined by these examples?

As for Piper, I think it depends on what you mean by worship. If worship involves prostrating yourself (in a spiritual sense; I don't mean literally) before someone else, then I can't see how God the Father worships God the Father. Perhaps God the Son worships God the Father in that sense. Piper would surely say that God takes delight in his own glory, and if that's all worship is then God worships himself.

(He doesn't take this literally as an axiom, by the way. He argues for it, and his argument is actually philosophical and not just biblical. But I'm not sure if you meant the axiomatic line literally.)

Piper's immediate source is Jonathan Edwards, but he sees himself as in the general Augustinian tradition on matters like this. Many of Piper's theological hobby horses are things he finds in Edwards that he sees Edwards finding in Augustine. I think he misunderstands Edwards at times and Augustine a little more often, and he runs roughshod over several important philosophical distinctions (especially with hedonism), but on this issue I think he's got it exactly right.

. . . He can't exercise full presidential powers over me, and he's my president.

Jeremy, this observation leaves out entirely what is crucial about (4). I agreed above with the point you make here. (4) expresses something different. Here, with emphasis added.

4. If just being President precludes Bush from exercising full Presidential powers over himself, then Bush is not his own President.

Alex's point, as I noted above, is relevant to the stronger conclusion that I did not draw.

Maybe an analogy will help. Suppose the NBA let's referees play but places the following rule on them: If you are a referee-player, then you cannot call fouls on yourself. Now I say this.

4'. If just being a referee precludes a player from exercising full referee powers over himself, then no player is his own referee.

Now Jeremy's objection amounts to this. "Why isn't he his own referee? I never commit fouls, so he can't exercise his full referee power over me, either".

I say: Yes, I agree, he cannot exercise his referee power to call a foul over players who don't qualify as players to be called out for fouling. But my point was entirely different. My point was that players who otherwise DO qualify (as players) to be called out for fouling--i.e. referee-players who commit fouls--but cannot be called out JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE REFEREES are not their own referees.

Trent (seems to) say: "But isn't every referee a referee for ALL players? (recall, doesn't a president preside over all citizens?). If so, then since he is a player, then by simple definition, he is his own referee."

I say: If a player-referee, given the rules, cannot call a foul on himself even when he otherwise qualifies to be called out for fouling then the player is not his own referee. And that is true despite the fact that in general referees are referees for all players.

The analogy is that if a President cannot get a Presidential pardon, simply because he is President (and not because as a citizen he does not qualify for such a pardon) then he is not his own President.

OK Gents, we've got kind of far away from Trent's point.

I made this point: Jesus says God, that is, the Father, is his god. Trent seems to be saying, if I understand him, that he can admit this, and still say that Jesus and God are numerically identical, because, a being can be its own God.

Now, that's an odd notion. It something is a god over you, it seems to follow that it has authority to command you, and that you have duty to worship it. And the concept of self-command *might* fly (or that might be a metaphor...), but as Jeremy points out, self-worship doesn't make sense, unless you just mean, sort of enjoying your own greatness. But Jesus worships the Father in the other sense Jeremy mentioned.

So - Trent - what about that? You sense, I gather, that you're sort of on the edge of being a social trinitarian or not. One way to test: are the Son and the Father one self, or not? If not, you may be a "real" social trinitarian (not that it has a precise def). If so, then you're saddled with the above problems.

Note that Alexander makes the old "qua" move. (Jesus qua man worships the Father, but presumably Jesus qua divine doesn't do that.) Is that how you wish to go? (If so that's another long subject - but we should ask Tom Senor to do a post on it!)

Hi Dale,

I don't think the discussion has drifted so far away from this point. Though I'm not anxious to pursue it further, the effort was to find a principled way of defending the metaphysical position that God cannot be God to/for/of himself. The suggestion was that if the fact alone that S is G precludes G from exercising some power/authority relative to S, then S is not his own G. That offers a principled explanation for why a player cannot be his own referee (in the case above), why Bush is not his own President, and why God cannot be his own God. The idea was to try to resolve the conflict among intuitions in some way that might be instructive or open some avenues. I agree that the examples were far from theological.

I didn't actually say that Jesus qua divine does not worship the Father.

In any case, I may be able to sketch a fairly precise sense to the "qua" here: Jesus' human will is the cause of the acts of worship. A bit of work is needed because God cooperates in every human act of will, including ours and those of Jesus, but I don't think there is any insuperable problem with going this route.

Of course this route requires that one say that Jesus' human will is distinct from his divine will. But we need to say that since monothelitism is a heresy.

Mike, the referee example seems different to me. If the player-referees can assign penalties to themselves but can't remove penalties, then it's analogous to the case of the president's pardoning abilities. In that case, I would say the referee is their own referee. In your case, I wouldn't. If none of the president's policies impacted on the president directly, then it would be more like the case as you stated it.

Mike, the referee example seems different to me. If the player-referees can assign penalties to themselves but can't remove penalties, then it's analogous to the case of the president's pardoning abilities. In that case, I would say the referee is their own referee. In your case, I wouldn't.

I can't follow that. Here is why the cases are relevantly analogous.

There is something the referee-player CANNOT do in his OWN case--even when he qualifies for it AS A PLAYER--that he can do in the case of every other similarly qualifying player. Namely, call a foul when, as a player, he qualifies for such a call.

In the president case, there is something the president CANNOT DO in his OWN case--even when he qualifies for it AS A CITIZEN--that he can do in the case of every other similarly qualifying citizen. Namely, pardon someone when they qualify as a citizen for a pardon.

Alex,

It doesn't seem like the claim of heresy should stave off the pursuit of truth. If the arguments push us in the direction that the once heretical appears more likely to be true, then shouldn't we adopt it as the new orthodoxy? I wouldn't want to bracket honest inquiry just because of heretical worries.

Mike:

I am confused. Suppose that a constitutional amendment prohibited presidents from pardoning members of their administration. That would be a reasonable rule. Surely, still, the Secretary of Defense would have the president as his president after the amendment was passed. But the president's relationship to himself would not change by such an amendment. Previously, he was prohibited from pardoning just one member of his administration--himself--and now he would be prohibited from pardoning any member of his administration. This would not change his relationship to himself. But it is likewise clear that vis-a-vis pardons he would be no less his own president than he would be the president of the secretary of defense. After the amendment he would be his own president, and hence likewise before it. Hence he is his own president now, unless of course some other disanalogy is found.

After the amendment he would be his own president, and hence likewise before it. Hence he is his own president now, unless of course some other disanalogy is found

Suppose the NBA adds ruel (2) to rule (1).
1. Referee-players cannot call fouls on themselves
2. Referee-players cannot call fouls on any player wearing an even numbered jersey.

Does adding the new rule (2) make it the case that the player-referee is now his own referee? No, it obviously doesn't. Now what we have is a set of additional players that the player-referee cannot call out for fouling even when they qualify for it.

In the case you describe, far from being reasonable, involves many more people in the executive branch that qualify as citizens for presidential pardon and cannot get one. The referee-player is not the referee of the players with even-numbered jerseys and the president (after your stipulation) is not the president of those citizens who happen to be in the executive branch.
The players in even-numbered jerseys should have fouls called on them when they qualify as players. And the executive members should recieve the presidential pardon when they qualify as citizens.

Let me repeat what I said, because I don't think what you've said touches it. The reason the player-referee who can't call fouls on themself is not their own referee is because it places the player beyond refereeing. This player has no checks and balances, and nothing any referee can do can affect the person, unless there's more than one referee involved.

Now in the case of a president it's not like that. There are checks a president can place on their own liberties, and there are laws a president can sign that could later come back to haunt them. Thus Bush can be his own president in a way your player-referee can't be their own referee.

I don't see how anything you've said since I first made that distinction changes anything.

I just came across this passage in the council of Ephesus (3rd ecumenical council; 431) about whether Christ is God of himself. I think it may be pertinent to the question of whether God is God's God. However, I don't claim that it IS pertinent.

(From the third letter of Cyril to Nestorius)

"Nor do we call the Word from God the Father, the God of Lord of Christ. To speak in that way would appear to split into two the one Christ and Son and Lord and we might in this way fall under the charge of blasphemy, making him the God and Lord of himself. For, as we have already said, the Word of God was united hypostatically with the flesh and is God of all and Lord of the universe, but is neither his own slave or master. For it is foolish or rather impious to think or speak in this way. It is true that he called the Father "God" even though he was himself God by nature and of his being; we are not ignorant of the fact that at the same time as he was God he also became man, and so was subjected to God according ot the law that is suitable to the nature of manhood. But how should he become God or Lord of himself?"

Sorry, been on vacation mountain biking, hiking, and camping and generally off the grid.

I see no real problems with the good old "qua" move and reviewing the discussion above I suppose I don't see any real problems with God being God's own God: certainly not ones arising from worship or commands.

The passage Tim finds--and Tim is very good at that sort of thing, a service for which I am often indebted (dammit)--however gives me pause. The grammar is a bit hard for me to parse, but it looks like it's pretty amenable to the qua move. It seems like the discussion above works around the master/slave bit anyway.

Trent,

One reason why parsing the text I quote is hard is that I'm dumb and wrote an "of" where there should be an "or". The first sentence should read:

"Nor do we call the Word from God the Father, the God or Lord of Christ."

I take Cyril to be saying that we shouldn't call the Son the God or Lord of Christ (the Son).

Thanks Tim. I think the important thing is *why* he warns against it.

It seems to me--as I said--that his reasons are good ones, but that the considerations above show how the negatives he's worried about can be avoided.

I believe that God does not have a god and that there can be no other god than God. But saying this means that God only serves himself (I don't know if that is insulting and if it is sorry, but it is something that has to be stated in order to continue the arguement). I say that for there to have been anything there had to be something. Everything that is could not have been created out of nothing because if everything started as nothing then that means that there would be no God. Could it be that God is an energy, after all one of the laws of energy states that it cannot be created or destroyed and so that means (in terms of my point) that God has to be an energy or else there is no God.

I am open to debate this to great extent with anyone and am open to anyone's opinion.