Could a theist deny PSR?

We’ve been talking about the principle of sufficient reason (PSR).  It plays a key role in some arguments for the existence of God, which naturally gives the atheist a motivation to deny it.  But there are also theists who deny it.  Is this a coherent position?  I’m not asking whether a theist could coherently reject some versions of PSR.  Of course a theist could do so.  I reject some versions of PSR.  But could a theist reject all versions?  Could a theist reject PSR as such?   Suppose that any version of PSR worthy of the name must entail that there are no “brute facts” -- no facts that are in principle unintelligible, no facts for which there is not even in principle an explanation.  (The “in principle” here is important -- that there might be facts that our minds happen to be too limited to grasp is not in question.)  Could a theist coherently deny that?

 
I don’t think so, certainly not on a Thomistic or other classical theist conception of God.  For suppose there are “brute facts.”  Either they would be facts about God or they would be facts about something other than God.  But surely no facts of the latter sort could be “brute facts” if theism is true.  For if some fact about something other than God was a brute fact, that would entail that it had no cause, no explanation, no source of intelligibility of any sort.  That would entail, among other things, that it did not have God as a cause, explanation, or source of its intelligibility.  Hence it would be something which does not depend on God for its being.  And that would conflict with the classical theist position that (as the First Vatican Council puts it) “the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, were produced, according to their whole substance, out of nothing by God” (emphasis added).

But couldn’t a theist hold that while there are no brute facts concerning anything other than God, there are brute facts concerning God himself?  Could he not say that God’s existence is a brute fact, or that God’s having a certain attribute is a brute fact? 

Again, not on a classical theist conception of God.  Suppose God is, as Aristotelians hold, pure actuality with no potentiality; or that he is, as Thomists hold, subsistent being itself.  Then he exists of absolute necessity, and thus has his sufficient reason in his own nature, and thus is not a “brute fact.”  So, to make God’s existence out to be a brute fact, one will have to deny that he is pure actuality or subsistent being itself.  That entails that he is a mixture of actuality and potentiality, and of an essence together with a distinct “act of existence” (to use the Thomist jargon).  But that in turn entails that he is composite rather than absolutely simple.  And that is incompatible with the classical theist position that divine simplicity is essential to theism, as well as with the de fide teaching of the Catholic Church (declared at the First Vatican Council as well as at the Fourth Lateran Council) that God is simple or non-composite.  Even to say that while God exists necessarily, his having some particular attribute is a “brute fact,” would also conflict with divine simplicity.  For if his having the attribute is a brute fact, then he does not have it necessarily but only contingently.  (If he had it necessarily, it would follow from his nature and for that reason would not be a brute fact.)  But if he is necessary while the attribute in question is contingent, then it is distinct from him and thus he is composite and not simple.

Nor, as it cannot be emphasized too strongly, is divine simplicity some eccentricity the classical theist arbitrarily tacks on to theism.  It is at the very core of the logic of theism.  If God were composite then it would make sense to ask how it is that his component parts -- act and potency, essence and existence, substance and attributes, or whatever -- happen to be combined together to form the composite.  It would make sense to ask “What caused God?,” in which case we would not really be talking about God anymore, because we would no longer be talking about the ultimate source of things.  Even if it were suggested that “God” so conceived has no cause and that it is just a “brute fact” or a matter of sheer chance that the composite exists, we will for that very reason be talking about something that could in principle have had a cause and might not have existed.  Why anyone would want to call that “God” I have no idea; certainly it bears no relationship to what classical theists mean by “God,” and by virtue of being composite, contingent, etc. it would in fact be the sort of thing classical theists would regard as creaturely rather than the Creator.  You might as well worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

So, just as PSR leads to theism, theism leads to PSR.  There is no circularity here, because one could accept PSR even if he didn’t think it leads to theism, and it takes additional premises to get from PSR to theism in any case.  But there is a natural affinity between the views, and this affinity shows how very far away from reality is the stupid caricature of theism as somehow irrationalist.  On the contrary, to see the world as intelligible or rational through and through is implicitly to be a (classical) theist, and to be a (classical) theist is implicitly to see the world as intelligible or rational through and through.  And by the same token, despite the rhetoric of its loudest contemporary proponents, atheism is implicitly irrationalist insofar as it must deny PSR so as to avoid theism. (More on these themes in some of the posts linked to at the end of the previous post.)