Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T09:22:25.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Omni-beauty as a divine attribute

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2018

JON ROBSON
JON ROBSON*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK
*
e-mail: jonvrobson@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The claim that God is perfectly beautiful has played a key role within the history of a number of religious traditions. However, this view has received surprisingly little attention from philosophers of religion in recent decades. In this article I aim to remedy this neglect by addressing some key philosophical issues surrounding the doctrine of divine beauty. I begin by considering how best to explicate the claim that God is perfectly beautiful before moving on to ask what consequences accepting this claim will have for our broader theorizing in philosophy.

Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 55 - 75
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, S. (2015) ‘Theism and the metaphysics of modality’ (PhD dissertation submitted to the University of Leeds).Google Scholar
Alston, W. P. (1986) ‘Does God have beliefs?’, Religious Studies, 22, 287–306.Google Scholar
Alston, W. P. (1991) Perceiving God: the epistemology of religious experience (Cornell, Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Alston, W. P. (1993) ‘Aquinas on theological predication: a look backward and a look forward’, in Stump, E. (ed.) Reasoned Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology in Honor of Norman Kretzmann (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press), 145–178.Google Scholar
Aquinas (1273/2006) Summa Theologica (Raleigh: Hayes Barton Press).Google Scholar
Aristotle (1907/2007) Metaphysics, McMahon, J. H. (tr.) (Mineola: Dover Publications).Google Scholar
Augustine (1961) Confessions, Pine-Coffin, R. S. (tr.) (London: Penguin).Google Scholar
Baddorf, Matthew (forthcoming) ‘An argument from divine beauty against divine simplicity’, Topoi.Google Scholar
Baker, Carl (2014) ‘The role of disagreement in semantic theory’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 92, 37–54.Google Scholar
Baker, Carl & Robson, Jon (2017) ‘An absolutist theory of faultless disagreement in aesthetics’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 98, 429–448.Google Scholar
Balthasar, H. U. von (1982) The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, I: Seeing the form (Edinburgh: T&T Clark).Google Scholar
Beardsley, Monroe C. (1981) Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (Indianapolis IN: Hackett).Google Scholar
Beebe, Maurice (1957) ‘Joyce and Aquinas: the theory of aesthetics’, Philological Quarterly, 36, 20–35.Google Scholar
Blackburn, Simon (1993) Essays in Quasi-Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Blackburn, Simon (1998) Ruling passions (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Breitenbach, Angela (2015) ‘Beauty in proofs: Kant on aesthetics in mathematics’, European Journal of Philosophy, 23, 955–977.Google Scholar
Chappell, Timothy (2006) ‘Review: The Unknown God: Agnostic Essays’, Mind, 115, 421–424.Google Scholar
Collinson, Diané (1985) ‘Ethics and aesthetics are one’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 25, 266–272.Google Scholar
Craig, William Lane (2011) ‘A nominalist perspective on God and abstract objects’, Philosophia Christi, 13, 305–320.Google Scholar
Craig, William Lane (2016) God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
de Cruz, Helen & de Smedt, Johan (2014) A Natural History of Natural Theology (Cambridge MA: MIT Press).Google Scholar
Delattre, Roland André (1968) Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Dreier, James (2004) ‘Meta-ethics and the problem of creeping minimalism’, Philosophical Perspectives, 18, 23–44.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto (1988) The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Edwards, Jonathan (1959) The Works of Jonathan Edwards, II, Smith, J. E. (ed.) (New Haven: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Fields, Stephen (2007) ‘The beauty of the ugly: Balthasar, the crucifixion, analogy and God’, International Journal of Systematic Theology, 9, 172–183.Google Scholar
Gaut, Berys (1998) ‘The ethical criticism of art’, in Levinson, J. (ed.) Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 182–203.Google Scholar
Geach, P. T. (1973) ‘Omnipotence’, Philosophy, 48, 7–20.Google Scholar
Geach, P. T. (1977) The Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Gellman, Jerome (2001) Mystical Experience of God: A Philosophical Inquiry (London: Ashgate Publishing).Google Scholar
Gibbard, Allan (1990) Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Gould, Paul (ed.) (2014) Beyond the Control of God? Six Views on the Problem of God and Abstract Objects (London: Bloomsbury).Google Scholar
Harries, Richard (1993) Art and the Beauty of God (New York: Mowbray).Google Scholar
Jordan, Mark D. (1989) ‘The evidence of the transcendentals and the place of beauty in Thomas Aquinas’, International Philosophical Quarterly, 29, 393–407.Google Scholar
Kidd, Ian James (2017) ‘Beauty, virtue, and religious exemplars’, Religious Studies, 53, 171–181.Google Scholar
Kölbel, Max (2004) ‘Faultless disagreement’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 104, 53–73.Google Scholar
Kölbel, Max (2009) ‘The evidence for relativism’, Synthese, 166, 375–395.Google Scholar
Kraay, Klaas J. (2010) ‘Theism, possible worlds, and the multiverse’, Philosophical Studies, 147, 355–368.Google Scholar
Leftow, Brian (2012) God and Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Levinson, Jerrold (ed.) (1998). Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Maddy, Penelope (1980) ‘Perception and mathematical intuition’, The Philosophical Review, 89, 163–196.Google Scholar
Maritain, Jacques (1930) Art and Scholasticism (New York: Scribner).Google Scholar
McAllister, James W. (2005) ‘Mathematical beauty and the evolution of the standards of mathematical proof’, in Emmer, M. (ed.) The visual mind II (Cambridge MA: MIT Press), 15–34.Google Scholar
Morris, Thomas V. & Menzel, Christopher (1986) ‘Absolute creation’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 23, 353–362.Google Scholar
Mothersill, Mary (1984) Beauty Restored (Oxford: Clarendon Press).Google Scholar
Novitz, David (1991) ‘Love, friendship, and the aesthetics of character’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 28, 207–216.Google Scholar
Palmira, Michele (2015) ‘The semantic significance of faultless disagreement’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 96, 349–371.Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1980) Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press).Google Scholar
Pseudo-Dionysius (1987) Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, Luibheid, C. & Rorem, P. (eds) (New York: Paulist Press).Google Scholar
Robson, Jon (2012) ‘Do possible worlds compromise God's beauty? A reply to Mark Ian Thomas Robson’, Religious Studies, 48, 512–532.Google Scholar
Robson, M. I. T. (2011) ‘Possible worlds and the beauty of God’, Religious Studies, 47, 479–492.Google Scholar
Robson, M. I. T. (2014) ‘Divine maximal beauty: a reply to Jon Robson’, Religious Studies, 50, 199–215.Google Scholar
Rowe, William L. (2002) ‘Can God be free?’, Faith and Philosophy, 19, 405–424.Google Scholar
Sassen, Brigitte (2001) ‘Heidegger on van Gogh's Old Shoes: the use/abuse of a painting’, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 32, 160–173.Google Scholar
Scruton, Roger (1979) The Aesthetics of Architecture (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Sevier, Christopher Scott (2015) Aquinas on Beauty (London: Lexington Books).Google Scholar
Sherry, Patrick (2007) ‘The beauty of God the Holy Spirit’, Theology Today, 64, 5–13.Google Scholar
Siegel, Susanna (2006) ‘Which properties are represented in perception?’, in Gendler, T. S. & Hawthorne, J. (eds) Perceptual Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 481–503.Google Scholar
Stump, Eleonore & Kretzmann, Norman (1981) ‘Eternity’, The Journal of Philosophy, 78, 429–458.Google Scholar
Tanner, M. (2003) ‘Ethics and Aesthetics are—’, in Bermudez, J. L. & Gardner, S. (eds) Art and morality (London: Routledge), 19–36.Google Scholar
Tweedale, Martin (1963) ‘Scotus and Ockham on the infinity of the most eminent being’, Franciscan Studies, 23, 257–267.Google Scholar
van Inwagen, Peter (2009) ‘God and other uncreated things’, in Timpe, K. (ed.) Metaphysics and God: Essays in Honor of Eleonore Stump (London: Routledge), 3–20.Google Scholar
Warner, Martin (2016) The Aesthetics of Argument (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Wippel, J. F. (1984) ‘Thomas Aquinas and participation’, in Wippel, J. F. (ed.) Studies in Medieval Philosophy (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press), 117–158.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1922/1999) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (New York: Dover).Google Scholar
Wolterstorff, Nicholas (1971) On Universals: An Essay in Ontology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Wynn, Mark (1997) ‘Beauty, providence and the biophilia hypothesis’, The Heythrop Journal, 38, 283–299.Google Scholar
Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus (1991) The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Zangwill, Nick (2002) ‘Are There counterexamples to aesthetic theories of art?’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 60, 111–118.Google Scholar