Article contents
Is Necessity Necessary?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Extract
Q: If necessity is the mother of invention, whence necessity?
A. (Thesis): The matrix of necessity in God-talk is religious experience, philosophically interpreted. The interpreters, theists and non-thesists, have indeed been inventive.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975
References
page 329 note 1 Findlay, J. N., ‘Can God's Existence Be Disproved?’ Flew, A. N. and Macintyre, A., Ed., New Essays In Philosophical Theology. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1955, pp. 47 ff.Google Scholar
page 329 note 2 Hick, John, ‘Necessary Being’, Journal of Philosophy, 1960, p. 726.Google Scholar
page 329 note 3 Tillich, Paul, The Courage To Be, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952.Google Scholar
page 330 note 1 Daher, Adel, ‘God and Factual Necessity’, Religious Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, March 1970, pp. 23 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 330 note 2 Plantinga, Alvin, ‘Necessary Being’ in Plantinga, Alvin, ed. Faith And Philosophy, Grand Rapids: Erdman's Publishing Co., 1964, pp. 97 ff.Google Scholar
page 330 note 3 Daher, , op. cit., p. 31.Google Scholar
page 331 note 1 Webster's Third International Dictionary of The English Language, unabridged. Springfield, Mass.: G. and C. Merriam Co., 1961, pp. 1510–11.Google Scholar
page 332 note 1 Hartshorne, Charles, Man's Vision of God, Chicago: Willet Clarke and Co., 1941.Google Scholar Cf. Also The Divine Relativity, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948.Google Scholar
page 333 note 1 Eliade, Mircea, The Scared and The Profane, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1959Google Scholar, and other publications of this prolific writer.
page 333 note 2 Gerardus, Van, Leeuw, Der, Religion In Essence and Manifestation. Harper Torchbook, Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 1967.Google Scholar
page 333 note 3 Dodd, C. H., The Bible and The Greeks, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964, p. 66.Google Scholar For these interpretations of the linguistic materials I am indebted to an unpublished essay of a former student, Fr. Richard Vaggione.
page 334 note 1 Cf. Munitz, Milton, The Mystery of Existence, New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1965.Google Scholar
page 334 note 2 Cf. Hepburn, Ronald, Christianity And Paradox, London: Watts, 1958.Google Scholar
page 334 note 3 There is, for instance, an unfortunate conflation of issues in the discussion of contingency by Gilkey, Langdon in his Naming The Whirlwind (Indianopolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1969).Google Scholar Gilkey's attempt to relate linguistic to moral, existential, and other forms of ‘ultimacy’ is, however, salutary and suggestive. The program reflected in his volume is close to the program we wish to commend and facilitate.
- 1
- Cited by