God’s place in the world

Abstract

Lewisian theism is the view that both traditional theism and Lewis’s modal realism are true. On Lewisian theism, God must exist in worlds in one of the following ways: (1) God can be said to have a counterpart in each world; (2) God can be said to exist in each world in the way that a universal can be said to exist in worlds (if universals exist), i.e. through transworld identity; (3) God can be said to be a scattered individual, with a part of God existing in each world; and, (4) God can be said to exist in each world, through His existing from the standpoint of each world. In the literature, (1)–(4) have been rejected as viable options. I grant that (1) and (3) are not viable. However, I believe that (2) and (4) have been too hastily rejected. Herein, I develop ways to respond to objections to (2) and (4), and conclude that (4) is a viable option for Lewisian theists.

Modal Metaphysics and the Existence of God

“…46 Thus, in short, in locating God within the 45 Cameron (2009) was the first individual to identify God as a non-individual that exists from the standpoint of every world, with Almeida (2017aAlmeida ( , 2017b further developing Cameron's position. The following proposal, however, is not subject to the criticisms that have been raised against this identification by Sheehy ( 2009) and Collier (2019Collier ( , 2021, as, first, the notion of Isolation is not present in this version of modal realism, and, second, God is not taken to be causally related to creation from this standpoint (or way of being) -both of which they believe leads to modal collapse. Rather, in this version of modal realism, worlds are indeed causally related, and it is in God's other way of being: as a possible individual that exists at a possible world, that God is 'causally related' to created reality, and thus there is no possibility of modal collapse.…”

Atheistic modal realism

“…I have no doubt that there are reasonable ways to modify Lewis to yield other theologies (e.g. Cameron (2009); Almeida (2017); Collier (2021); Maia (2021)). But here I focus exclusively on what I take to be Lewis's own theology.…”