Crossref Citations
This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref.
Dore, Clement
1984.
Theism.
p.
49.
Article contents
Can God be Both Perfect and Free?1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Extract
The difficulty of ascribing metaphysical predicates such as absoluteness, necessity and perfection to God while simultaneously ascribing personal predicates such as compassion, freedom and agency has often been noted. Most efforts to resolve this dilemma have tended to fall into one of three categories: (I) a merely verbal solution such as that God is ‘compassionate in terms of our experience but…not so in terms of [God's] own’; (2) the univocal and unqualified ascription of the metaphysical predicates to God coupled with equivocation with respect to the personal predicates which results in the final elimination of the latter; (3) the fideistic denial that intelligible language is applicable to God. Unfortunately, none of these is satisfactory. The first solution is seen to be but a version of the second, and it is arguable that the second is, as Feuerbach contends, tantamount to a ‘subtle, disguised atheism’, since ‘to deny all the qualities of a being is equivalent to denying the being himself’ or, alternatively, ‘an existence in general, an existence without qualities, is an insipidity, an absurdity’. The third ‘solution’ is no better and is hardly more than an evasive tactic.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982
References
page 191 note 2 Anselm, St, Proslogium, translated by Sidney Norton, Deane B. A. (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1958), p. 13.Google Scholar
page 191 note 3 Feuerbach, Ludwig, The Essence of Christianity, translated by Eliot, George, introduced by Barth, Karl with a foreword by Niebuhr, H. Richard (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957), pp. 15 and 14.Google Scholar
page 191 note 4 Ogden, Schubert M.., The Reality of God and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 26.Google Scholar For a good example of the atheistic attack on the fideist position see Nielsen, Kai, ‘Can faith validate God-talk?’, New Theology No. 1, edited by Marty, Martin E. and Peerman, Dean G..(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1964), pp. 131–49.Google Scholar
page 192 note 1 See, among others, Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (New York: Harper and Row, 1941)Google Scholar; The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948)Google Scholar; The Logic of Perfection: And Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1962)Google Scholar; Anselm's Discovery: A Re-Examination of the Ontological Argument for God's Existence (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1965).Google Scholar
page 192 note 2 Hartshorne, Charles, Anselm's Discovery, p. 43.Google Scholar
page 192 note 3 Anselm, , op. cit. p. 7.Google Scholar
page 193 note 1 Hartshorne, Charles, The Divine Relativity, p. 20.Google Scholar
page 193 note 2 Hartshorne, Charles, The Logic of Perfection, pp. 34, 40–1.Google Scholar
page 194 note 1 Pailin, , op. cit. p. 150.Google Scholar
page 194 note 2 Smart, Ninian, ‘Omnipotence, Evil and Supermen’, in God and Evil: Readings on the Theological Problem of Evil, edited by Pike, Nelson (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964), p. 104.Google Scholar
page 194 note 3 ibid. pp. 110–111.
page 195 note 1 Pailin, , op. cit. p. 152.Google Scholar
page 195 note 2 ibid. p. 152.
page 196 note 1 ibid. p. 152.
page 197 note 1 Hartshorne, Charles, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1970)Google Scholar, especially chapter xvi, ‘The Aesthetic Matrix of Value’, pp. 303–21.Google Scholar
page 197 note 2 Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1929), p. 28.Google Scholar
page 197 note 3 Hartshorne, , Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, p. 308.Google Scholar
page 197 note 4 The phrase is taken from song, Tom Lehrer's, ‘The Old Dope Peddler’ from his recording, Songs By Tom Lehrer (Cambridge, Mass.: 1953).Google Scholar
page 198 note 1 Hartshorne, , Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, p. 310.Google Scholar
page 199 note 1 ibid. p. 309.
page 200 note 1 ibid. pp. 309–10.
- 1
- Cited by