Whitehead’s position regarding God’s power is rather unique in the philosophical and theological landscape. Whitehead rejects divine omnipotence (unlike Aquinas), yet he claims (unlike Hans Jonas) that God’s persuasive power is required for everything to exist and occur. This intriguing position is the subject of this article. The article starts with an exploration of Aquinas’s reasoning toward God’s omnipotence. This will be followed by a close examination of Whitehead's own position, starting with an introduction to his philosophy of organism and (...) its two-sided concept of God. Thereupon, an analysis of Whitehead’s idiosyncratic view on God’s agency will show that, according to this conception, God and the world depend upon each other, and that God’s agency is a noncoercive but persuasive power. The difference between coercion and persuasion will be explained as well as the reason why God, according to Whitehead’s conception, cannot possibly coerce. Finally, a discussion of the issue of divine almightiness will allow for a reinterpretation of divine almightiness from a Whiteheadian perspective, which will show how, despite Whitehead’s rejection of God’s omnipotence, his concept retains essential elements of God as pantokrator (and thus markedly differs from Hans Jonas's concept). (shrink)

Introduction i. Character of the Book The central thesis of this book is that experiential awareness of God, or as I shall be saying, the perception of God, ...

It is common to appeal to governing laws of nature in order to explain the existence of natural regularities. Classical theism, however, maintains the sovereignty thesis: everything distinct from God is created by him and is under his guidance and control. It follows from this that God must somehow be responsible for natural laws and regularities. Therefore, theists need an account of the relation between regularities, laws, and God. I examine competing accounts of laws of nature and conclude that dispositional (...) essentialism provides the most satisfactory explanation of the relation between, and. (shrink)

Modal basics -- Some solutions -- Theist solutions -- The ontology of possibility -- Modal truthmakers -- Modality and the divine nature -- Deity as essential -- Against deity theories -- The role of deity -- The biggest bang -- Divine concepts -- Concepts, syntax, and actualism -- Modality: basic notions -- The genesis of secular modality -- Modal reality -- Essences -- Non-secular modalities -- Theism and modal semantics -- Freedom, preference, and cost -- Explaining modal status -- Explaining (...) the necessary -- Against theistic platonism -- Worlds and the existence of God. (shrink)

The idea that God, understood as the most perfect being, must create the best possible world is often underacknowledged by contemporary theologians and philosophers of religion. This book clearly demonstrates the rationale for what Justin Daeley calls Theistic Optimism and interacts with the existing literature in order to highlight its limitations. While locating Theistic Optimism in the thought of Gottfried Leibniz, Daeley argues that Theistic Optimism is consistent with divine freedom, aseity, gratitude, and our typical modal intuitions. By offering plausible (...) solutions to each of the criticisms levelled against Theistic Optimism, he also provides a vigorous and original defence against the charge that it deviates from the Christian tradition. Engaging with both the Christian tradition and contemporary theologians and philosophers, Why God Must Do What is Best positions the idea of Theistic Optimism firmly within the language of contemporary philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Sets of contingent objects, perhaps, are as contingent as their members; but properties, propositions, numbers and states of affairs, it seems, are objects whose non-existence is quite impossible. If so, however, how are they related to God? Suppose God has a nature: a property he has essentially that includes each property essential to him. Does God have a nature? And if he does, is there a conflict between God's sovereignty and his having a nature? How is God related to such (...) abstract objects as properties and propositions? These are the questions I want to explore. - Introduction. (shrink)

Mark C. Murphy addresses the question of how God's ethics differs from human ethics. Murphy suggests that God is not subject to the moral norms to which we humans are subject. This has immediate implications for the argument from evil: we cannot assume that an absolutely perfect being is in any way bound to prevent the evils of this world.

Emmanuel Levinas is one of the most original philosophers in the twentieth century. In this book, continuing his thought on obligation, he investigates the possibility that the word God can be understood now, at the end of the twentieth century, in a meaningful way. The thirteen essays collected in this volume offer an introduction to the wide range of Levinas's thought, addresses philosophical questions concerning politics, language and religion and the philosophies of, amongst others, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Marx and Derrida. The (...) essays also touch on the Marxist concept of ideology, death, hermeneutics, the concept of evil, the philosophy of dialogue, the relation of language to the Other, and the acts of communication and mutual understanding. Nine of the essays appear in English for the first time. (shrink)

In ethical reflections on new technologies, a specific type of argument often pops up, which criticizes scientists for “playing God” with these new technological possibilities. The first part of this article is an examination of how these arguments have been interpreted in the literature. Subsequently, this article aims to reinterpret these arguments as symbolic arguments: they are grounded not so much in a set of ontological or empirical claims, but concern symbolic classificatory schemes that ground our value judgments in the (...) first place. Invoking symbolic arguments thus refers to how certain new technologies risk undermining our fundamental symbolic distinctions by which we organize and evaluate our interactions with the world and in society. Such symbolic distinctions, moreover, tend to be resilient against logical argumentation, mainly because they themselves form the basis on which we argue in the cultural and ethical sphere in the first place. Therefore, effective strategies to evaluate and counter these arguments require another approach, showing that these technologies either do not challenge these classifications or, if they do, how they can be accompanied by the proper actions to integrate these technologies into our society. (shrink)

(i) God is omniscient; therefore, for any change, C, among particulars, God knows the occurrence of C. (ii) If God knows the occurrence of C, then X. (iii) not-X. It is clear that the set of propositions (i)—(iii) is inconsistent. This is the general form of two problems—which I call the ‘problem of change in knowledge’ (PCK) and the ‘problem of change in essence’ (PCE)—for Avicenna concerning God’s knowledge of particulars. No work in the secondary literature has discussed exactly what (...) PCK and PCE are. In this paper, I will clarify exactly what they are. (shrink)

God, the Best, and Evil is an original treatment of notable problems about God and his actions towards human beings. Three main topics are investigated in detail. First, if God exists, is God in some sense necessarily a value-maximizer? Second, Does a serious difficulty for the existence of God arise from the apparent fact that if God exists then God could have actualized a better possible world than this one? Thirdly are there strong objections top the existence of God based (...) on evil? In the course of tackling the problem of evil, Langtry provides a partial theodicy for evil -- one that is neutral between Theological Compatibilism, Molinism and and Open Theism. (shrink)

Why me? -- Sticks and stones -- Hammer of God -- God is great -- The problem of atheists -- Guardian angels -- Nations under God -- God knows.

We are living at the dawn of the first truly scientific picture of the universe-as-a-whole, yet people are still dragging along prescientific ideas about God that cannot be true and are even meaningless in the universe we now know we live in. This makes it impossible to have a coherent big picture of the modern world that includes God. But we don't have to accept an impossible God or else no God. We can have a real God if we redefine (...) God in light of knowledge no one ever had before. The key question is, “Could anything actually exist in the scientific universe that is worthy of the name, God?” My answer is yes: God is an “emergent phenomenon,” as real as the global economy or the government or the worldwide web, which are all emergent phenomena. But God arose from something deeper: the complex interactions of all humanity's aspirations. An emerging God has enormous implications. (shrink)

This book discusses and exemplifies the philosophy of religion, or philosophical reflection on central themes of religion.

Based on the Wilde Lectures in Natural Religion given by Anthony Kenny at Oxford from 1970 to 1972, here revised in light of recent discussion and reflection, this provocative book examines some of the principal attributes traditionally ascribed to God in western theism, particularly omniscience and omnipotence. From his discussion of a number of related topics, including a comprehensive treatment of the problem of the relations between divine foreknowledge and human freedom, Kenny concludes that there can be no such being (...) as the God of traditional natural theology. (shrink)

God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism is a defense of God's aseity and unique status as the Creator of all things apart from Himself in the face of the challenge posed by mathematical Platonism. After providing the biblical, theological, and philosophical basis for the traditional doctrine of divine aseity, William Lane Craig explains the challenge presented to that doctrine by the Indispensability Argument for Platonism, which postulates the existence of uncreated abstract objects. Craig provides detailed examination (...) of a wide range of responses to that argument, both realist and anti-realist, with a view toward assessing the most promising options for the theist. A synoptic work in analytic philosophy of religion, this groundbreaking volume engages discussions in philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and metaontology. (shrink)

"At once rigorous, insightful, and accessible.... the most thorough study yet available on the phenomenological treatment of God as gift in Marion and Derrida. Invaluable reading for those concerned with the theological promise of contemporary Continental philosophy."-Thomas A. Carlson, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Can or should God be considered a managerial stakeholder? While at first glance such a proposition might seem beyond the norms of stakeholder management theory or traditional management practice, further investigation suggests that there might be both theoretical and practical support for such a notion. This paper will make the argument that God both is and should be considered a managerial stakeholder for those businesspeople and business firms that accept that God exists and can affect the world. In doing so, (...) part one of the paper first discusses the growth of religion and spirituality within the business and academic communities. Part two raises several arguments based on stakeholder theory and business reality to support the notion of God as a managerial stakeholder. Part three addresses the arguments against God as a managerial stakeholder. Part four discusses the managerial implications of considering God as a managerial stakeholder. The paper concludes with its limitations. (shrink)

Einstein wrote his famous sentence "God does not play dice with the universe" in a letter to Max Born in 1920. All experiments have confirmed that quantum mechanics is neither wrong nor “incomplete”. One can says that God does play dice with the universe. Let quantum mechanics be granted as the rules generalizing all results of playing some imaginary God’s dice. If that is the case, one can ask how God’s dice should look like. God’s dice turns out to be (...) a qubit and thus having the shape of a unit ball. Any item in the universe as well the universe itself is both infinitely many rolls and a single roll of that dice for it has infinitely many “sides”. Thus both the smooth motion of classical physics and the discrete motion introduced in addition by quantum mechanics can be described uniformly correspondingly as an infinite series converges to some limit and as a quantum jump directly into that limit. The second, imaginary dimension of God’s dice corresponds to energy, i.e. to the velocity of information change between two probabilities in both series and jump. (shrink)

Herman Philipse puts forward a powerful new critique of belief in God. He examines the strategies that have been used for the philosophical defence of religious belief, and by careful reasoning casts doubt on the legitimacy of relying on faith instead of evidence, and on probabilistic arguments for the existence of God.

Does God exist? The question implies another: Who is God? This book is meant to give an answer to both questions and to give reasons for this answer. Does God exist? Yes or no? Many are at a loss between belief and unbelief; they are undecided, skeptical. They are doubtful about their belief, but they are also doubtful about their doubting. There are still others who are proud of their doubting. Yet there remains a longing for certainty. Certainty? Whether Christians (...) or Jews, believers in God or atheists, the discussion today runs right across old denominations and new ideologies - but the longing for certainty is unquenched. Does God exist? We are putting all our cards on the table here. The answer will be "Yes, God exists, " As human beings in the twentieth century, we certainly can reasonably believe in God - even more so in the Christian God - and perhaps even more easily today than a few decades or centuries ago. For, after so many crises, it is surprising how much has been clarified and how many difficulties in regard to belief in God have melted into the Light that no darkness has overcome. (shrink)

A question that has been largely overlooked by philosophers of religion is how God would be able to effect a rational choice between two worlds of unsurpassable goodness. To answer this question, I draw a parallel with the paradigm cases of indifferent choice, including Buridan's ass, and argue that such cases can be satisfactorily resolved provided that the protagonists employ what Otto Neurath calls an ‘auxiliary motive’. I supply rational grounds for the employment of such a motive, and then argue (...) against the views of Leibniz and Nicholas Rescher to show that this solution would also work for God. (shrink)

In one of his precritical works, Kant defends, as “the only possible” way of demonstrating the existence of God, an argument from the nature of possibility. Whereas Leibniz had argued that possibilities must be thought by God in order to obtain the ontological standing that they need, Kant argued that at least the most fundamental possibilities must be exemplified in God. Here Kant’s argument is critically examined in comparison with its Leibnizian predecessor, and it is suggested that an argument combining (...) the strengths of both of them has much to be said for it. (shrink)

The association of God with eternity, and eternity with timelessness, harms Christian spiritual life. If eternity is superior to time, then God’s placement of human beings within time is ungenerous. Fortunately, the Christian concept of God as triune commends divine becoming through time. In particular, the social Trinitarian view that God is three persons united through love demands divine temporality. Relationality relies on change for its content. So, for God to be internally related, God must be internally timeful. Moreover, to (...) assert that the Trinitarian persons relate through time places a high value on human relationships. Created in the image of God, we are called to create ever-closer community through time. This effort sanctifies time, rendering kairos of chronos. Kairos is the experience of time as sacred, whereas chronos is the experience of time as purposeless. For the three persons of the Trinity, all time is kairos. For us, every moment contains the potential for kairos because God sustains the universe continually. Through faith, the moment-by-moment progression of time can become the grace-by-grace gift of God. (shrink)

God is thought to be eternal. Does this mean that he is timeless? Or is he, rather, omnitemporal? In this paper we want to show that God cannot be omnitemporal. Our starting point, which we take from Bernard Williams’ article on the Makropulos Case, is the intuition that it is inappropriate for persons not to become bored after a sufficiently long sequence of time has passed. If God were omnitemporal, he would suffer from boredom. But God is the greatest possible (...) being and therefore cannot be bored. God, hence, is not omnitemporal. After the presentation of our argument, we address several objections by examining possible differences between human and divine persons. (shrink)

God and Goodness takes the experience of value as a starting point for natural theology. Mark Wynn argues that theism offers our best understanding of the goodness of the world, especially its beauty and openness to the development of richer and more complex material forms. We also see that the world's goodness calls for a moral response: commitment to the goodness of the world represents a natural extension of the trust to which we aspire in our dealings with human beings.

Part of the Elements Philosophy of Religion series, this short book focuses on the spiritual dimensions of life’s meaning as they have been discussed in the recent English and mainly analytic philosophical literature. The overarching philosophical question that this literature has addressed is about the extent to which, and respects in which, spiritual realities such as God or a soul would confer meaning on our lives. There have been four broad answers to the question, namely: God or a soul is (...) necessary for meaning in our lives; they are not necessary for it; one or both would enhance the meaning in our lives; and they would detract from it. These views have been largely advanced in chronological order through the history of Western philosophy, with the view that life would be meaningless without God and a soul having been most prominent in the medieval period, the rejection of this claim having arisen in the modern era, and then sophisticated positions about enhancement or reduction having appeared in earnest only in the past 20 years. This book addresses all four positions, paying particular attention to the more recent views. Beyond familiarizing readers with these positions, it presents prima facie objections to them, points out gaps in research agendas, and suggests argumentative strategies that merit development. (shrink)

In this paper I make the case for epistemic relativism: the radical view that all human knowledge/truth is relative. I extend the application of epistemic relativism to include necessary laws such as the laws of logic. I argue that the truth of such laws are relative to human thought, which are ultimately instances derived from our experiences. These experiences act as limitations to which we are conceptually bound. As a result of this, we cannot apprehend God’s omnipotence. This includes God’s (...) maximal power in being able to perform logically impossible actions. Our epistemic inability to conceive of such logically impossible actions is therefore testimony that God transcends the laws of logic. (shrink)

God and moral obligations -- What is a divine command theory of moral obligation? -- The relation of divine command theory to natural law and virtue ethics -- Objections to divine command theory -- Alternatives to a divine command theory -- Conclusions: The inescapability of moral obligations.

In early modern times it was not uncommon for thinkers to tease out from the nature of God various doctrines of substantial physical and metaphysical import. This approach was particularly fruitful in the so-called beast-machine controversy, which erupted following Descartes’ claim that animals are automata, that is, pure machines, without a spiritual, incorporeal soul. Over the course of this controversy, thinkers on both sides attempted to draw out important truths about the status of animals simply from the notion or attributes (...) of God. Automatists – led by Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Dilly – developed six such arguments, appealing to divine justice, providence, economy, glory (twice) and wisdom, while opponents to animal automatism developed two arguments, appealing to divine wisdom and goodness. In this article I shall examine the substance of all eight of these arguments, along with their origins, patronage, and variations, and the objections they elicited from opponents, with the aim of determining their suitability for use in contemporary debates about animal sentience and consciousness, and hence their relevance for contemporary philosophers. (shrink)

The emergent new science of synthetic biology is challenging entrenched distinctions between, amongst others, life and non-life, the natural and the artificial, the evolved and the designed, and even the material and the informational. Whenever such culturally sanctioned boundaries are breached, researchers are inevitably accused of playing God or treading in Frankenstein’s footsteps. Bioethicists, theologians and editors of scientific journals feel obliged to provide an authoritative answer to the ambiguous question of the ‘meaning’ of life, both as a scientific definition (...) and as an explication with wider existential connotations. This article analyses the arguments mooted in the emerging societal debates on synthetic biology and the way its practitioners respond to criticism, mostly by assuming a defiant posture or professing humility. It explores the relationship between the ‘playing God’ theme and the Frankenstein motif and examines the doctrinal status of the ‘playing God’ argument. One particularly interesting finding is that liberal theologians generally deny the religious character of the ‘playing God’ argument—a response which fits in with the curious fact that this argument is used mainly by secular organizations. Synthetic biology, it is therefore maintained, does not offend so much the God of the Bible as a deified Nature. While syntheses of artificial life forms cause some vague uneasiness that life may lose its special meaning, most concerns turn out to be narrowly anthropocentric. As long as synthetic biology creates only new microbial life and does not directly affect human life, it will in all likelihood be considered acceptable. (shrink)

It is difficult to evaluate the role of activity - of force or of that which has causal efficacy - in Descartes’ natural philosophy. On the one hand, Descartes claims to include in his natural philosophy only that which can be described geometrically, which amounts to matter (extended substance) in motion (where this motion is described kinematically).’ Yet on the other hand, rigorous adherence to a purely geometrical description of matter in motion would make it difficult to account for the (...) interactions among the particles that constitute Descartes’ universe, since the notions of extension and kinematical motion do not in themselves imply any causal agency. There is, after all, no reason to expect that a particle whose single essence is extension, even if we suppose it to be moving, should impart motion to another particle, while conversely, there is no reason to expect a resting particle to hinder the motion of an impinging one. Descartes' hankering for an austere ontology of matter in motion is in danger of excluding causal agency (force, conceived dynmically) from matter. To the modern reader it may seem obvious that Descartes did not get himself into such a fix, since matter in motion so readily reminds us of kinetic energy or of some more primitive notion of force. Yet by no means is it obvious that Descartes attributed causal efficacy to matter in motion per se. Serious scholars have held opposite positions on this issue. Westfall, Gabbey, and others’ have argued that although on the metaphysical plane Descartes attempted to eliminate force from his mechanical universe, nonetheless ‘force is a real feature’ of his mechanical world. The thrust of this view is that Descartes conceived of force as ‘the capacity of a body in motion to act’, by means of impact, upon other bodies. An opposing interpretation, defended here, is that Descartes did in fact deny causal agency to moving matter per se, restricting agency to immaterial substances such as the human mind, angels, and God. The intention of this interpretation is not to de-emphasize the role of matter in motion in Descartes’ explanation of nature, but rather to stress the fact that Descartes did not conceive of this moving matter dynamically. -/- Reprinted in Descartes, ed. by J. Cottingham, Oxford Readings in Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 281–310. (shrink)

Naturalistic ethics is the reigning paradigm among contemporary ethicists; in God and Cosmos, Baggett and Walls argue that this approach is seriously flawed. This book canvasses a broad array of secular and naturalistic ethical theories in an effort to test their adequacy in accounting for moral duties, intrinsic human value, prospects for radical moral transformation, and the rationality of morality. In each case, the authors argue, although various secular accounts provide real insights and indeed share common ground with theistic ethics, (...) the resources of classical theism and orthodox Christianity provide the better explanation of the moral realities under consideration. Among such realities is the fundamental insight behind the problem of evil, namely, that the world is not as it should be. Baggett and Walls argue that God and the world, taken together, exhibit superior explanatory scope and power for morality classically construed, without the need to water down the categories of morality, the import of human value, the prescriptive strength of moral obligations, or the deliverances of the logic, language, and phenomenology of moral experience. This book thus provides a cogent moral argument for God's existence, one that is abductive, teleological, and cumulative. (shrink)

In God, Mind and Logical Space István Aranyosi takes the reader on a journey for the mind by revisiting the fundamental questions and the everlasting debates in philosophy of religion, ontology, and the philosophy of mind. The first part deals with issues in ontology, and the author puts forward a radical view according to which all thinkable objects and states of affairs have an equal claim to existence in a way that renders existence a relative notion. In the second part (...) another radical view is argued for, according to which some objects and states of affairs that do not exist in our world are nevertheless present in our surroundings by being real in their consequences. The final part argues that the only way to prove the existence of God is to accept a view called Logical Pantheism, according to which God is identical to Logical Space. (shrink)

The Kalām cosmological argument deploys the following causal principle: whatever begins to exist has a cause. Yet, under what conditions does something ‘begin to exist’? What does it mean to say that ‘X begins to exist at t’? William Lane Craig has offered and defended various accounts that seek to establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for when something ‘begins to exist.’ I argue that all of the accounts that William Lane Craig has offered fail on the following grounds: either (...) they entail that God has a cause or they render the Kalām argument unsound. Part of the problem is due to Craig’s view of God’s relationship to time: that God exists timelessly without creation and temporarily with creation. The conclusion is that Craig must abandon either the Kalām argument or his view of God’s relationship to time; he cannot consistently hold both. (shrink)

Suppose that God exists, and that God does not violate the laws of nature he created for the world. God can nevertheless act in the world, by acting at the indeterministic quantum level. This chapter makes two specific points about God’s quantum action. First, on some ways of understanding quantum mechanics (specifically, the GRW theory, and the associated Continuous Spontaneous Localization theories), God’s actions are almost unlimited, contrary to those who say that God would be quite constrained in his action, (...) if he only acted at the indeterministic quantum level. Second, on these ways of understanding quantum mechanics, God’s actions in the world need not be episodic, contrary to what for example John Polkinghorne has claimed about God’s quantum action. This discussion builds on discussions by Al Plantinga about noninterventionist special divine action. (shrink)

Does God's existence make a difference to how we explain morality? Mark C. Murphy critiques the two dominant theistic accounts of morality--natural law theory and divine command theory--and presents a novel third view. He argues that we can value natural facts about humans and their good, while keeping God at the centre of our moral explanations.

Can belief in God be rationally justified? Reviewing in detail traditional and modern arguments for and against the existence of God, Professor Plantinga concludes that they must all be judged unsuccessful. He then turns to the related philosophical problem of the existence of other minds, and defends the so-called analogical argument against current criticisms. He goes on to show, however, that although this argument affords us the best reasons we have for belief in other minds, it finally succumbs to the (...) same malady that afflicts the teleological argument of God. (shrink)

The study of man on Earth is a historical science akin to forensic science and is best conducted with the truth of scripture in mind. Surely, this approach is quite consistent with Bussey’s argument since the presence of God is needed in our spacetime to create not only life and mind but also human beings in God’s image.

God is omniscient; therefore, He knows that ‘the flower in my hand is red.’ If God knows that ‘the flower in my hand is red,’ then He knows it perceptually. God does not know anything perceptually. It is clear that the set of propositions – form an inconsistent triad. This is one of four problems with which Avicenna was engaged concerning God's knowledge of particulars, which I call the problem of perceptual knowledge. In order to solve PPK and three other (...) problems, Avicenna has developed a theory concerning God’s knowledge of particulars. Secondary literature around Avicenna’s theory of God’s knowledge of particulars has mostly directed its attention to give an account of Avicenna’s positive theory rather than the problems which that theory was designed to solve. But this paper will not do the same thing as this secondary literature. In contrast, in this paper, I will concentrate on the characterization of one of the problems, i.e., PPK, because of which Avicenna has presented his positive theory of God’s knowledge of particulars. In short, this paper aims to show why Avicenna deems explaining God’s knowledge of, say, the redness of a flower, via his accepted theory of perception as problematic. In this regard, I will extract three versions of PPK based on Avicenna's philosophy and through it will shed some light on Avicenna’s theory of God’s knowledge of particulars. (shrink)

Jean-Luc Marion advances a controversial argument for a God free of all categories of Being. Taking a characteristically postmodern stance, Marion challenges a fundamental premise of both metaphysics and neo-Thomist theology: that God, before all else, must be. Rather, he locates a "God without Being" in the realm of agape, of Christian charity or love. This volume, the first translation into English of the work of this leading Catholic philosopher, offers a contemporary perspective on the nature of God. "An immensely (...) thoughtful book. . . . It promises a rich harvest. Marion's highly original treatment of the idol and the icon, the Eucharist, boredom and vanity, conversion and prayer takes theological and philosophical discussions to a new level."--Norman Wirzba, Christian Century. (shrink)

This book assembles the evidence for what the Greek Fathers, the men whose contructive thought underlies the creeds, really thought and taught about the nature of God. It shows that they were original thinkers, with a profound reverence for the text of the Scriptures, and minds keenly tranined to discuss what ultimate truths were expressed in the scriptural text and what reality should be ascribed to Christian religious experience. The results indicate that a good deal which is assumed in current (...) theological text-books needs to be revised. The Fathers had to reconcile monotheism with faith in a Trinity of divine Persons. In the process, they pursued many lines of inquiry, often only to discard them after trial, but after following various clues and making various intellectual adventures they reached a solution of the problem, which was both true to their data and philosophically reasonable. Though the bulk of the book is concerned with the third and fourth centuries, during which the creeds were in the process of formulation, the story is carried down to the eighth century where the progress of original thought came to a standstill. It is shown that a great change came over the philosophical tradition during the sixth century, and owing to the consequent growth of formalism, a genuine outbreak of tritheism occurred. The book ends with the account of how this outbreak was met and overcome, largely through the efforts of a thinker whose very name is unknown, and whose book has only survived under the name of another man. (shrink)

According to Augustine, abstract objects are ideas in the Mind of God. Because numbers are a type of abstract object, it would follow that numbers are ideas in the Mind of God. Let us call such a view the Augustinian View of Numbers (AVN). In this paper, I present a formal theory for AVN. The theory stems from the symmetry conception of God as it appears in Studtmann (2021). I show that Robinson’s Arithmetic, Q, can be interpreted by the theory (...) in Studtmann’s paper. The interpretation is made possible by identifying the set of natural numbers with God, 0 with Being, and the successor function with the essence function. The resulting theory can then be augmented to include Peano Arithmetic by adding a set-theoretic version of induction and a comprehension schema restricted to arithmetically definable properties. In addition to these formal matters, the paper provides a characterization of the mind of God. According to the characterization, the Being essences that constitute God’s mind act as both numbers and representations – each has all the properties of some number and encodes all the properties of that number’s predecessor. The conception of God that emerges by the end of the discussion is a conception of an infinite, ineffable, axiologically and metaphysically ultimate entity that contains objects that not only serve as numbers but also encode information about each other. (shrink)

In this clear and provocative account of the epistemology of religious experience, William P. Alston argues that the perception of God—his term for direct experiential awareness of God—makes a major contribution to the grounds of religious belief. Surveying the variety of reported direct experiences of God, Alston demonstrates that a person can be justified in holding certain beliefs about God on the basis of mystical experience.

The most discussed and most significant issue on the religious scene today is whether it is possible, or even desirable, to believe in God. Mr. Kaufman's valuable study does not offer a doctrine of God, but instead explores why God is a problem for many moderns, the dimensions of that problem, and the inner logic of the notion of God as it has developed in Western culture. His object is to determine the function or significance of talk about God: how (...) the concept of God is generated in human experience; the special problems in turn generated by this concept (for example, the intelligibility of the idea of transcendence, the problem of theodicy) and how they are met; and under what circumstances the idea of God is credible or important or even indispensable. He does not try to prove God's existence or nonexistence, but elucidates what the concept of God means and the important human needs it fulfills. Four of the eleven essays have been previously published, at least in part; seven are completely new. (shrink)