According to the descriptivist theories, the primary function of modal discourse is to track and describe modal facts and properties, which supposedly exist independently of our expressive capacities and make true our modal statements. In this respect, the mainstream view of modality is certainly the Lewisian extensional possible-worlds realism. An important part of our investigation will be devoted to developing a plausible account of the meaning of modal claims involving divine names within possible-worlds semantics and the logic that governs their use within TIL. Following Tichý (1979, 'Existence and God', Journal of Philosophy 76, 8: 403-420), God stands for an individual office (a function taking world-time to individuals): that is, He is bound to something for an individual to be. Existence, understood as a property instantiable by offices rather than a requisite of an individual office instantiable by individuals, is then the property of being occupied. Accordingly, applying the possible-worlds theory, necessary existence is for an office to be occupied in all worlds and all times. God has necessary existence if and only if the proposition that his office is occupied is true in all worlds at all times.
However, while most analytic philosophy has defined necessity as truth in all possible worlds, in recent years inferentialists have offered an alternative analysis. On the inferentialist view, modal claims do not have the function of tracking or describing special modal features of this world—or of describing other possible worlds. Instead, modal language serves a distinctive kind of expressive function. Besides the descriptivist approach, this research project aims to introduce inferentialist analysis of necessity to religious discourse and assess its prospects. In particular, we will use this account and inferentialist (or normativist) semantics, as suggested in the works of Robert Brandom (2019, A Spirit of Trust, Cambridge: Harvard University Press) and developed in modal normativism by Amie Thomasson (2020, Norms and Necessity, Oxford: Oxford University Press), to shed light on the concept of divine necessity, or at least to investigate how (and whether) it might supplement or provide an alternative to current analyses of divine necessity.
In more detail, on the expressivist views, modal claims are used to make the rules of use of our terms explicit (Brandom, 2008, Between saying and doing: Towards an analytic pragmatism. Oxford: Oxford University Press). Unlike the possible worlds interpretation of necessity, God's existence is not made necessary because it recurs in every possible world; rather, the assertion of the necessity of God's existence is to be understood as making explicit the status of 'God exists' as an object-language reflection of a semantic rule (and what follows from it).
But to defend this view, there would have to be a suitable semantic rule that is arguably expressed by 'God exists.' In Tichý's terms, this would roughly be that proposition that the role of God is occupied is a tautology. In turn, by adding a modal term of necessity, speakers take an explicit stand regarding the inferential role whereby if God is a role then is occupied. Such a rule, though, would be controversial. Atheists would certainly object. The necessity of God's existence does not appear to correspond to any particular semantic rule. Nevertheless, as possible way out, we will try resort a minimalist account of religious discourse and try to defend the idea that affirmations of divine existence are considered to be unconditionally assertible within the framework of religion or theology. The pragmatic aim of the modal claim is then to draw attention to the semantic rule that makes the denial of His existence impermissible under the circumstances addressed by that framework (which employs distinct standards of justification than those of, say, the framework of science).