John Stuart Mill and omnipotence
Castle Conwy, Wales 2001
Reformatted: November 30, 2021, original 2009
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
Blackburn states Mill is ‘the most influential liberal thinker of the nineteenth century.’[1] He is the son of Scottish philosopher James Mill (1773-1836).[2] George W. Carey (2002) writes that John Stuart Mill reasoned that traditional Christianity needed to be replaced[3] and Mill introduced a concept of a ‘limited God.’[4] Mill reasons there is a ‘final cause’ that appears to be God working within the natural order,[5] but this God was not omnipotent and had limited powers that were incapable of bringing about the full reality of what God wanted.[6] Mill within Theism from 1833 explains that there could be no real belief in a ‘Creator and Governor’ until humankind had begun to understand the confused phenomena which existed around them.[7]
Humanity must bring itself out of the chaos and confusion of reality to have a workable system in able to work out ‘a single plan.’[8] This type of world was anticipated ‘by individuals of exceptional genius’ but could only become true after a long period of scientific examination and thought.[9] Mill desired to replace the God of Christianity with a Religion of Humanity.[10] He reasoned traditional Christianity had been overrated in its promotion of human virtue and morality in society.[11] The Christian God was not the actual creator of the world.[12]
Mill’s views strike me as influential on modern western religious thought. I can support, in limited terms, human effort to understand reality and improve human conditions. Indeed humanity should come together as much as possible to develop a plan in order to benefit all of humanity.
I would not support a ‘Religion of Humanity,’ but do favour persons of various religious and non-religious backgrounds working together for human benefit.
Mill rejects Christianity and traditional Christian doctrine concerning omnipotence. Mill’s deity is similar to the ‘Platonic Demiurge’ and this deity simply develops matter from preexisting chaos and therefore would not only be limited in power but also finite in nature. Mill supports a concept of a first cause[13] as in a series of events[14] but this leaves the nagging question and problem of what was the cause of the Demiurge? An infinite eternal God can be understood as the first cause not needing a cause.[15]
A finite deity, although admittedly logically possible, requires further explanation.[16] If the being is not revealed through Scriptural revelation, it is a God of primarily philosophical speculation and requires further elaboration on the part of Mill in regard to, for instance, why humanity should believe in and follow this type of deity, assuming that there is not a greater, infinite, eternal first cause that would necessarily exist behind that being.
[1] Blackburn (1996: 243).
[2] Blackburn (1996: 243).
[3] Carey (2002: 115).
[4] Carey (2002: 115).
[5] Carey (2002: 115-116). Mill within Theism discusses the need for a cause and beginning to a series of individual facts. Mill (1833)(1985)(2009: 7). Everything persons know of has a cause and owes existence to a cause. He ponders on how the world can be indebted to a cause for which the world has its existence. He deduces ‘that not everything which we know derives its existence from a cause, but only every event or change.’
Mill (1833)(1985)(2009: 10).
[6] Carey (2002: 116). David Gordon writes that Mill believed God was limited in nature and therefore not omnipotent. Gordon (2002: 3).
[7] Mill (1833)(1985)(2009: 6).
[8] Mill (1833)(1985)(2009: 6).
[9] Mill (1833)(1985)(2009: 6).
[10] Carey (2002: 110). In The Utility of Religion from 1874, Mill explains that Christianity offers rewards in the next life for good conduct and the Religion of Humanity would be superior as human virtue would exist for unselfish reasons. Mill (1874)(2002: 16). Although I reason Christians should do what is good and right, just because it is good and right, and not primarily for a possible reward, Mill does not demonstrate in my mind a conclusive argument in how human beings, as they are, can or will ever operate with completely unselfish motives. Is all selfishness wrong, or does some degree of human self-concern and a desire for self-benefit remain an integral part of how God intended humanity to be?
[11] Carey (2002: 114).
[12] Carey (2002: 116). Gordon reasons that Mill was ‘no Christian.’ Gordon (2000: 2).
[13] Carey (2002: 116). Gordon (2002: 3). Mill (1833)(1985)(2009: 10).
[14] Mill (1833)(1985)(2009: 7).
[15] God’s essence is eternal and necessary (logically must exist), and the finite universe is temporal and contingent (not necessary). Shedd (1874-1890)(1980: 191 Volume 1).
[16] Hypothetically, humanity and the universe could have been created by a finite God that was created by another cause.
BLACKBURN, SIMON (1996) Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
CAREY, GEORGE W. (2002) ‘The Authoritarian Secularism of John Stuart Mill’, in On Raeder’s Mill and the Religion of Humanity, Volume 15, Number 1, Columbia, University of Missouri Press.
GORDON, DAVID (2000) ‘John Stuart Mill on Liberty and Control’, in The Mises Review, Volume 6, Number 1, Auburn, Alabama, Ludwig Von Mises Institute.
MILL, JOHN STUART (1833)(1985)(2009) Theism: John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume X - Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society, Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
MILL, JOHN STUART (1874)(2002) The Utility of Religion, London, Longman, Green, and Reader.
SHEDD, WILLIAM G.T. (1874-1890)(1980) Dogmatic Theology, Volume 1, Nashville, Thomas Nelson Publishers.
WAINWRIGHT, WILLIAM J. (1996) ’Demiurge’, in Robert Audi, (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Blackberry photos: September 2009
