Questions tagged [theology]
Theology is the field of study and analysis that treats of God and of God's attributes and relations to the universe; the study of divine things or religious truth; divinity.
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Attributes of God in Spinoza’s “Ethics”
In Spinoza’s Ethics, he remarks that God/Nature has infinitely many attributes. However, in the Ethics, he only identifies and discusses two of these attributes: thought and extension, which account ...
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Duns Scotus : how can the " concept of being" be univocal without there being a nature common to God and to creatures?
Source : Paul Vincent Spade, Survey Of Medieval Philoosphy (https://pvspade.com/Logic/index.html)
Dunst Scotus is said to hold the thesis of univocity of being: i.e. the thesis according to which the ...
user37859
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Should we accept the PSR on the grounds of cognitive faculty?
Feser said in his publication, "Scholastic Metaphysics - A Contemporary Introduction" that if we reject the PSR, we're undermining any possibility of rational inquiry. Also in Pruss' paper, "PSR and ...
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According to trinitarians, why can't there be multiple human persons who share one human substance?
According to trinitarians, if there can be three divine persons within the Godhead who share one divine substance, why can't there be multiple human persons who share one human substance?
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Please recommend some works on criticism/critique of the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita?
Can someone recommend some scholarly works on critique / criticism of the Bhagavad Gita.
Specifically from its utilitarian and broad ethical framework perspectives.
Can it be said that just because ...
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Are there any other "omni-" paradoxes known similar to omnipotence?
The paradox related to omnipotence is well known - in one of the many possible forms it asks whether an omnipotent being can create a stone that it cannot lift.
While there are many similar paradoxes ...
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Absolute Divine Simplicity (ADS) and the Triune Godhead
Though apparent, the framework of the Triune Godhead appears logically incoherent in juxtaposition to the Absolute Divine Simplicity model.
Looking through the works of Thomas Aquinas, who is the most ...
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Did Augustine try to prove God's existence using Set Theory?
Some time ago I heard a professor of mine describe Augustine's Confessions as an attempt to prove God's existence using set theory. I didn't get a chance to ask him more of what he meant, and ...
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Weakness of Spinoza's ontological argument
The ontological arguments of God are many, the weaknesses they suffer can be found in this reference.
My goal here is to focus on Spinoza’s ontological argument.
Spinoza's argument is different from ...
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Is process philosophy at odds with orthodox Christian theology?
Process philosophy regards change, as opposed to stasis, as the basis of reality. Does this contradict orthodox Christian theology, such as Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and the various Protestant ...
user43593
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Are all explanations either personal or scientific?
In A New Cosmological Argument, Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss offer up a cosmological argument for a personal God, from the weak principle of sufficient reason (among other premises, but the WPSR ...
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How do compatibilists understand "responsible"?
In Scott Christensen's book "What about free will?" on page 119 is "Pharaoh is held responsible for his actions". The reason given for God attributing culpability is "You are exalting yourself...".
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Which philosophy views "value" as the god?
What spiritual philosophy does Robert Lawrence Kuhn describe here? This view says that everything exists because of the value of the totality of universe.
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What is a simplistic definition of Boethius' Consolation with Philosophy?
The specific extract is where he asks Lady Philosophy about the correlation of omniscience and free will having a coherent existence together. I know the extract well, but I struggle to define it ...
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How would Nietzsche argue against classical theism?
Completely out of curiosity, how would someone like Nietzsche, let's use him as an example, argue against Aquinas's metaphysical argument for classical theism. I can't seem to find any references in ...
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Omnipotence Paradox Defense and Meinongianism/Neo-Meinongianism
I was considering a solution to the omnipotence paradox in which excluding logical impossibilities from the definition of omnipotence is justified as follows. Consider the proposition, "God could ...
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Reference requests re: maltheism
What are some philosophical texts on maltheism?
Maltheism is the belief that there is an Evil God who enjoys our suffering and is toying with us.
People also believe that there is a hell that was made ...
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Can someone formulate John Pollack's argument in understandable terms for laymen?
http://www.strongatheism.net/library/atheology/ontological_argument_for_nonexistence/
By the way, I am not asking whether this argument is sound or not. I just want to have it formulated in ...
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Does God pay attention? That is, does it make sense to talk about him paying attention to something?
I'd like to know about different theological theories of what it might mean for God to pay attention to something. Thanks.
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Eternal uncreated things besides God
There is a big debate in the Philosophy of Rellgion as to whether or not there are things that are uncreated eternal things besides God, like abstract objects.
Some say that claiming there are ...
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What is Charles Renouvier's Conception of God?
Charles Renouvier (1815-1903) was a French philosopher. He adopted a view of the finiteness of space and time.
He also adopted a view of finiteness of God.
Could you, please, give me the whole picture ...
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Metaphysical vs ontological necessity
There are many forms of consequence. It seems that there should be some method of distinguishing between them. Of primary concern to philosophers are two types of consequence: physical causality and ...
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Why does Thomas Aquinas conclude that the First Mover is God?
It appears to me that the First Mover of any motion must not move only with respect to the change it is producing, but otherwise could be moved in a way unrelated to what it is changing, or moved ...
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Boethius, Logical Necessity, and Accidental Necessity: A Solution to Free Will and Foreknowledge?
In his classic book, the Consolation of Philosophy (Book V), Boethius attempts to make an argument that libertarian free will and [divine] foreknowledge are not incompatible. His argument goes ...
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How may Nikolaus von Kues’ “concept of concept” be applied as a bridge between logic and theology?
I am neither a specialist for logic nor for theology. Yet, I was electrified about Nikolaus von Kues statement that God is the concept of concept.
Has Kues’ proposition somehow been applied as a real ...
user26880
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Can the Mind-Body Question ignore Non-locality?
Paul M. Churchland's Matter and Consciousness which I enjoyed, except for his conclusion. He never mentioned non-locality. Assuming boundaries to the 4-D S-T Continuum, how can a First-Efficient-...
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Are Theists and physicists talking about an empty universe or no universe at all?
When they talk about the beginning of the universe, are Theists and physicists talking about an empty universe or no universe at all?
It is fairly straightforward to imagine an empty Universe - an
...
user6917
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Could we take the fully rational and fully informed idealized agent that Peter Railton talks about as God, to give a theistic metaethics?
Recently, I finished Alexander Miller's book "An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics." After reading about Peter Railton's reductionism, I wondered if it would be possible to take the agent which ...
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Is this assertion by Sartre an existentialist reading Pascal's Pensées?
In his book What Is Literature?, Sartre says:
Here, I am thinking of Pascal, who relentlessly repeated that man was an irrational composite of metaphysics and history, his greatness unexplainable
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Can I agree to what I do not allow the sovereign?
Suppose we enter a social contract to bring about some power
Social contract arguments typically are that individuals have
consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their
freedoms ...
user63148
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Can an immaterial being not be conscious?
Is it possible for an immaterial being or object with causal powers to not be conscious? Or is this a contradiction?
The only immaterial being I can conceive of to have causal powers is a conscious, ...
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How does a necessary being fully explain contingent beings?
X contingent <=> there is W s.t. W -> S, where "->" is derivation, not material implication
X necessary <=> X not contingent
Theists claim, without further clarification, ...
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Kant's "interpret them as divine commands" remark
I was thinking about the idea of teleological/natural-law ethics as founded in the will of a divine power, and I thought that there would be (A) a purpose that this power had set for Itself alongside (...
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Should our confidence in god decrease the longer we go without finding clear cut evidence of Him?
Every mystery we ever had to solve that was solved in some way was explained through natural causes. This includes the diversification of life, thunder, etc.
On the one hand, the large amount of time ...
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In Thomas Aquinas'es Argument from Degrees, how does he mean that fire is maximally hot and the cause of all heat?
Thomas Aquinas is famous for having made 5 arguments for the existence of God. The weirdest of them is arguably the Argument from Degrees.
To illustrate his point, he claimed, if I correctly ...
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We-intentions and the kingdom-of-ends version of the categorical imperative
One of Allen Wood's most finely ground axes was his contention that, notwithstanding certain translations/interpretations of Kant's writings on categorical imperatives, the three primary formulations ...
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Is infinity an imperfect and unsubstantial epiphenomenon of the finite?
To my mind the concepts of the finite and the infinite are equally mysterious.
But recently I was surprised to encounter the view that infinity may be something different from what I have ...
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Can a backwards infinite regress account for its own existence?
Suppose we have a domain of discourse D with an infinite collection of elements, and suppose that it is the case that the existence of each element x is dependent upon another element y (or collection ...
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A quantum mechanical response to van Inwagen's rejection of the PSR
Peter van Inwagen famously rejected the PSR due to his argument that it implied necessitarianism: Take the conjunct C of all contingent facts. Being contingent itself, the PSR demands an explanation F....
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Does proving a negative aspect prove its positive counterpart?
In Ambrose’s Dē bonō mortis his main proof for why death is not evil, lies in his link between the corporeal body and the soul. In short, he argues that death is not evil, because it causes no harm to ...
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The Byzantine intellectual tradition....an underreported History?
There are of course volumes and volumes of questions on Ancient Greek Philosophy and Philosophers; this is to be expected since Ancient Greece was and is still largely viewed as the Fountainhead of ...
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Evidence for Nature works under direction of God?
I have read from somewhere¹ and it sounds very right, that Nature works under supervision of God.
However problem with this, may be that it seems unfalsifiable. What would be nature like with ...
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Does Descartes avert the divine illumination trope or play it straight?
(Preamble: according to tvtropes.com, a trope can be instantiated, meaning played straight, or almost subversively instantiated, meaning averted.)
In the Book of Ezekiel, an entity known as the ...
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How would Leibniz respond to this objection to his argument for God's existence?
Leibniz argues for the existence of a necessary being using the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR).
Any contingent fact about the world must have an explanation. (Principle of sufficient reason)
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What does St.Thomas Aquinas teach about state of the univerese after renewal in Summa Theologica?
In Summa Theologica suppl.q.91, St.Thomas teaches clearly about the state of the world after its renewal. In article 5 of the same question I said above, he says plants and animals will not remain in ...
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How does Buddhist soteriology link to the first cause argument?
Aquinas argued that the observable order of causation is not
self-explanatory. It can only be accounted for by the existence of a
first cause; this first cause, however, must not be considered ...
user38026
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Is there a class of arguments for God that does not rely on knowledge of His work -- the world?
I was just having a discussion in comments (I won't recreate its details) that has convinced me that we can't know God through his work, through the world He is said to have created. Is there a class ...
user38026
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What falls under Hegel's concept of "absolute knowledge": does that include deductive logic and scientific explanation?
In the wikipedia page for Hegel's Science of Logic, it states:
According to Hegel, logic is the form taken by the science of thinking
in general. He thought that, as it had hitherto been ...
user38026
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How did Hartshorne make the idea of perfection rationally conceivable?
This question is motivated by trying to find an answer for christo183's question: Why did Hartshorne believe in God?
Looking at the Wikipedia article referenced in that question, I found two passages ...
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What, for Nietzsche, is a noble death?
This thread Why is Nietzsche so against Socrates? on Socrates and Jesus's death and the article that I linked to there, got me glibly wondering...
In Human, All to Human, Nietzsche says that
How ...
user6917