Heller M, Woodin W.H. (eds.) Infinity. New research frontiers (CUP, 2011)(ISBN 1107003873)(O)(327s)_MAml_

CHAPTER 14A (Partially) Skeptical Responseto Hart and RussellDenys A. TurnerI want to suggest a way into the theological notion of infinity via the notion of“otherness,” or, if you prefer a more negative and restrained proposition, I want tosuggest that there is a problem about how to speak of the divine infinity, one that connectswith a problem about how to speak of the divine “otherness.” The chapters by Hartand Russell in this volume have ably shown how the “infinity” of God was historicallya problem for Christian theologians, inheriting as they did Greek notions of the infiniteas formless and vacuous “indeterminacy,” and both are right to emphasize the crucialrole of Gregory of Nyssa in generating a notion of the divine infinity that allows usto speak non-oxymoronically of God as “infinite perfection.” Not wishing to rehearsethat historical question – I could neither want nor hope to match the brilliant luciditiesof either’s chapter – my concern is rather with how that same problem with which earlyChristian theologians were faced about divine infinity recurs for us today in connectionwith general notions of “otherness.” Furthermore, we can see in what way there is aproblem – as in general terms arising out of our ordinary conceptions of “otherness” –from the following objection to the proposition that God is “infinite” found in ThomasAquinas’s Summa Theologiae (ST Ia, q7, a1, obj3). The objection goes like this:What exists in such a way as to be “here” and not “there” is finite in respect of place.Hence, what so exists as to be “this somewhat” rather than “another somewhat” is finiteas “things” go [secundum substantiam]. But God is “this” and not something else: forhe is not stone or wood. Therefore God is not an infinite “somewhat” [non est infinitussecundum substantiam].One further disclaimer: I am not concerned in this chapter with how Thomas resolvesthis problem so much as with the way in which it arises for him. The question ofhow to characterize the divine “otherness” is, we may say, a question about how tocharacterize the divine “transcendence.” But if we try to set out that transcendence interms of “otherness,” we immediately run up against Thomas’s objection. A “this” thatis other than a “that” is necessarily finite; indeed, any “this” other than a “that” wouldhave to be a “somewhat” (identifiable existent), so if we can give an account of the“other than” in such relational propositions, then we have, as it were, drawn the terms290