Review of Brian Leftow, God and Necessity: Oxford University Press: Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-926335-6, hb, x + 575 pp.

SOPHIA (2015) 54:227229

DOI 10.1007/s11841-015-0469-x

Review of Brian Leftow, God and Necessity

Oxford University Press: Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-926335-6, hb, x + 575 pp.

Bruce Langtry1

Published online: 25 June 2015# Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

This book is concerned with absolute necessitywhat Alvin Plantinga calls broadly logical necessity and Saul Kripke calls metaphysical necessity. The main focus is on the modal status of secular propositionsroughly, propositions, which, if true, provide no information about God. The central idea is that God voluntarily gives secular propositions (and states of affairs) their modal status.

Leftows theory is very innovative and is developed at great depth. The overall level of rigour in argument is high. Leftow anticipates and forestalls many likely objections to his claims.

Leftows main case for his theory is that it explains what needs to be explained and is superior to rival candidate metaphysics of absolute necessity and possibility (From now on, necessity, necessarily and necessary will always signify absolute necessity). For most of the book, the rival candidates in view are theistic-Platonist accounts and the view that the modal status of secular propositions and states of affairs is fixed by Gods nature (understood as absolutely essential to him). Towards the end, Leftow draws on considerations advanced earlier to argue that his metaphysics of modality is also superior to any non-theist theory dealing in possible worlds. This conclusion, he points out, amounts to the claim that realists about possible worlds should become theists. His arguments therefore add up to part of a case for Gods existence. Although he attends briefly to non-realist views, he defers a full treatment of modal anti-realism to another occasion.

From a theistic standpoint, the motivation for God and Necessity is the prima facie challenge which necessity poses for the claim that God is the sole ultimate reality and that he is unconstrained by anything outside and independent of himself. While Leftow often finds it convenient to speak of about concepts, propositions, states of affairs and possible worlds, he holds that such talk is fictional, getting at realities constituted by Gods acts of conceiving and of exercising his non-natural powers (i.e. powers that God does not have by nature).

* Bruce Langtry [email protected]

1 School of Historical and...