A Christian Understanding of Modality

Possibility. Actuality. Contingency. Necessity.


These four categories are quite essential to our understanding of the world. We may not use these terms exactly, but we constantly refer to the concepts they describe in our speech. Words like “could”, “may”, “must”, “can’t”, etc. can be used to loosely refer to these categories. If we wanted to be philosophically precise, we’d call them modal categories. Modality is an aspect of metaphysics/linguistics dealing with the mode in which things exist, and the four categories I mentioned are some of the most fundamental although there are others. 


How should a Christian understand modality? 


This is an important question that many Christians, including Christian philosophers, do not pay enough attention to. As Van Tilians, we try our best to be epistemologically self-conscious and this should be no exception. 


What got me thinking about this was a discussion I recently had on Discord with some unbelievers. The discussion was about whether or not a Godless (uncreated) universe can be said to be random or chaotic. My addition to the discussion was as follows: 



anyways..


God or Chance is, in fact, a true dichotomy. 


Chance, randomness, chaos, lawlessness.. whatever term we what to use we are still just trying to capture the same concept. And that concept is *pure contingency* or we could call it *indeterminacy*.  By way of definition, it is the denial of necessity. 


*are the facts of reality the way they are due to the sovereign will of a personal God?*


the Christian answers yes and the unbeliever answers no. 


The Christian believes God’s will precedes and determines the facts. So if God wills X, X *must* occur. In that sense, X is necessary. X is necessary because God’s will cannot be resisted - it’s a kind of contingent (some have called it nomological) necessity, The unbeliever does not have anything that can supply this “must-ness” (necessity). 


the category of Possibility precedes the category of Necessity. To say something is necessary is to say that it’s non-actuality is im*possible*. Necessity cannot be defined without reference to possibility which entails that possibility is logically prior to necessity. What this implies is that for any fact to be necessary, there must be something *actual* that rules out (makes impossible) its  non-actuality. For the Christian, this something is God - God willing X rules out not-X as an impossibility. What fulfills this role for the unbeliever? There is no suitable answer because all actuality in reality is subject to possibility. 


This entails that an unbelieving universe is purely contingent (or we can say indeterminate) - *nothing* is necessary, *nothing* is impossible, and *anything* can happen. There is no room for law or order or regularity in such a universe because such things presuppose necessity. 


If it is a law that humans cant regenerate a lost limb in under 5 seconds, then that entails that it is *impossible* for humans to regenerate. However, in a purely contingent world where anything is possible, it would be possible for humans to regenerate a lost limb. 

so yes, an uncreated universe is indeed random (i.e. purely contingent or indeterminate).


In response to this, one of the unbelievers argued: 


So according to you..

For something(like God)to be necessary... There needs to some possibly that's already actual which makes the existence of God to be possible rather than impossible? 


And this is a reasonable response as it forces the Christian to lay out his metaphysic and spell out how it differs from the unbeliever’s. And that’s what I did in my response to the unbeliever. I said: “What’s true at the created level is not necessarily true at the divine level. Gods existence is *sui generis*. He is metaphysically ultimate and self-sufficient. All possibility is founded on His unique actuality.”


In my response, I briefly outline a Christian understanding of modality and I am to flesh it out a bit more here. One of Van Til’s major arguments against unbelief, which I’ve further developed in my own writings (see If Logic then God Chapter 2 and The Best Argument for Christianity Chapter 7), is that the unbeliever’s metaphysical view, by rejecting the Absolute Personal God of Christian Theism, allows for abstract possibility and pure contingency in reality. And this implies that anything can happen, leading to a universe with no room for laws, regularity, or uniformity. There is therefore a need to spell out how a Christian view avoids these problems. 


In my brief response to the unbeliever, I tried to lay out a two-tiered understanding of modality. This is no different from the two-tiered approach of the Archetype-Ectype Model used in giving an account of things like logic, morality, and theological predication. In essence, the Christian worldview is inherently two-tiered because of the Creator/creature distinction. This is no different when it comes to modality. The divine mode of existence and the creaturely mode of existence are fundamentally different. Divine Actuality and creaturely actuality are fundamentally different. In the self-sufficient actuality of the Triune God, we have an actuality that is not conditioned by any possibility. Rather, all possibility is determined by Him. 


God is Absolute. Therefore, there is nothing and no one above or beside Him. Prior to creation, He existed alone and perfectly, needing nothing else to qualify Him or serve as a point of reference. He was pure actuality - perfectly self-contained. Even possibility didn’t exist alongside Him. Given the Christian understanding, then, possibility is a created thing and it is defined with respect to God’s actuality. Therefore, on the created level, possibility precedes actuality. However, at the ultimate level, Actuality precedes and determines all possibility. As such, the Christian worldview does not face the numerous problems that arise from a metaphysical scheme that allows for abstract possibility and pure contingency.


P.S.: I go over these problems and more in The Best Argument for Christianity which you can get here if you’re interested.


God Bless!

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