#805 Distinguishing the Order of Being and the Order of Knowing

Dr. craig’s response

What you’re missing, Mason, is the old distinction between the order of being (ordo essendi) and the order of knowing (ordo cognoscendi). Since this distinction is very important and useful, your question gives me the opportunity to explain it to readers who are not acquainted with it.

The order of being concerns the ontological dependence of some aspects of reality on other aspects. For example, in the order of being God precedes the universe, since the universe depends upon God for its existence. But in the order of knowing the universe may well precede God, since we can infer from the universe that God exists.

Similarly in the case you mention, in the order of being God precedes the goodness of His various attributes. They are good because they are ontologically grounded in God, Who, as you say, is a maximally great being, a perfect being, worthy of worship.

Where you go wrong is in saying, “we know love is good because God is the locus of goodness and He is all loving.” In the order of knowing we first experience the goodness of love in moral experience and so infer that God is all-loving. This is crucial in the moral argument for God’s existence: we know that objective moral values exist without knowing they are grounded in God.

The appearance of circularity arises from ignoring the two different orders involved. If we clearly grasp that we are climbing two different ladders, one the ladder of being and the other the ladder of knowing, then we won’t feel that we are ascending and descending the same ladder at the same time.

Ordo Essendi                  Ordo Cognoscendi

God                                           God

↓                                               ↑

World                                       World

God is always first in the order of being; but He may be later in the order of knowing.