scholarly journals Present in Love: Rethinking Barth on the Divine Perfections

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-258
Author(s):  
Ian A. McFarland
Keyword(s):  
Divine Perfections

scholarly journals Fluctuating maximal God

2020 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-247
Author(s):  
Anne Jeffrey ◽  
Asha Lancaster-Thomas ◽  
Matyáš Moravec
Keyword(s):  
Original Proposal ◽  
Static View ◽  
Argument From Evil ◽  
Conceptual Problems ◽  
Divine Perfections ◽  
Better Than

Abstract This paper explores a variety of perfect being theism that combines Yujin Nagasawa’s maximal God thesis with the view that God is not atemporal. We argue that the original maximal God thesis still implicitly relies on a “static” view of divine perfections. Instead, following the recent re-evaluation of divine immutability by analytic philosophers, we propose that thinking of divine great-making properties (omnipotence, omniscience etc.) as fluctuating but nevertheless remaining maximal either for every time t or across all times strengthens the original maximal God thesis. Furthermore, we show that “temporalising” Nagasawa’s maximal God and adopting what we call the fluctuating maximal God thesis provides more effective ways of responding to objections to perfect being theism, in particular, the argument from evil and some conceptual problems pertaining to the Incarnation. Finally, we demonstrate that our proposal is compatible with Christian Scriptures and coheres with numerous biblical passages better than Nagasawa’s original proposal does.

scholarly journals Transcendentality and Nothingness in Sartre's Atheistic Ontology

Philosophy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 95 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-495
Author(s):  
King-Ho Leung
Keyword(s):  
Universal Properties ◽  
Divine Perfections

AbstractThis article offers a reading of Sartre's phenomenological ontology in light of the pre-modern understanding of ‘transcendentals’ as universal properties and predicates of all determinate beings. Drawing on Sartre's transcendental account of nothingness in his early critique of Husserl as well as his discussion of ‘determination as negation’ in Being and Nothingness, this article argues that Sartre's universal predicate of ‘the not’ (le non) could be understood in a similar light to the medieval scholastic conception of transcendentals. But whereas the scholastics saw the transcendental properties of oneness, truth, and goodness as reflections of God's divine perfections, Sartre's predicate of the ‘not’ operates as an atheistic transcendental which signifies the non-being of God – that God is not. By comparing Sartre's phenomenological ontology to medieval theological metaphysics, this article not only highlights the atheist underpinnings of Sartre's entire ontological schema in Being and Nothingness but also offers a new way of interpreting Sartre as a systematic transcendental metaphysician.

DO COMPASSION AND OTHER EMOTIONS MAKE US MORE INTELLIGENT?

Think ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (30) ◽  
pp. 45-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Scrutton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Divine Perfections

Compassion (or ‘feeling with’) has attracted fervent admiration and vehement condemnation. Among the critics are some Stoics and early Christians, and early modern philosophers such as Kant and Spinoza. Characteristics that are regarded as ideal in humans tend to be regarded as divine perfections as well. Accordingly, traditional Christian and Jewish theology includes the belief that God is ‘impassible’, that is, both emotionless (in general) and incapable of suffering (in particular). Divine compassion is precluded on both grounds.

Anselmianism about God

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark C. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Divine Perfection ◽  
Divine Perfections ◽  
Conditional Claim ◽  
Freedom Of Action

It is sometimes held that God, as an Anselmian—that is, absolutely perfect—being, must be loving. This chapter defends a conditional claim: insofar as God is necessarily loving, that is due to, and extends only as far as, the love that God must have on account of God’s being necessarily morally perfect. For, first, any account of God’s nature that requires God to be loving in a way that goes beyond what is morally required will unacceptably limit God’s freedom of action; and second, being loving cannot be an independent divine perfection, for it lacks an intrinsic maximum, and having an intrinsic maximum is essential to divine perfections on the Anselmian conception. The chapter also considers, and rejects, reasons from revelation to hold that morality-surpassing love is a divine perfection.

God

2019 ◽  
pp. 212-226
Author(s):  
Katherine Sonderegger
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Doctrine Of God ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Divine Omnipotence ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Divine Perfections ◽  
The One

Barth’s doctrine of God is revolutionary. It leaves behind many of the traditional elements of a doctrine of God—natural knowledge of God, comparative religious practice, and proofs—and puzzles over simplicity and immutability. In their place Barth installs a new maxim, that God demonstrates or ‘proves’ himself. The Bible is the record of that self-demonstration. The divine perfections emerge in dialectical pairs, each displaying the personal life of God as the ‘One who loves in freedom’. Language for God successfully names God when it speaks of Jesus Christ, the Holy One who exemplifies divine omnipotence, omniscience, grace, mercy, and patience. In this way, Barth carries out his programme of Christological concentration, even in the doctrine of God. This is a doctrine of God unlike any other, an unsettling and a glorious one.

Barth and the divine perfections

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 450-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Sonderegger
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Divine Perfections ◽  
Radical Claim ◽  
Act And Being

AbstractColin Gunton advanced the radical claim that Christians have univocal knowledge of God. Just this, he said in Act and Being, was the fruit of Christ's ministry and passion. Now, was Gunton right to find this teaching in Karl Barth – or at least, as an implication of Barth's celebrated rejection of ‘hellenist metaphysics’? This article aims to answer this question by examining Gunton's own claim in Act and Being, followed by a closer inspection of Barth's analysis of the doctrine of analogy in a long excursus in Church Dogmatics II/1.Contrary to some readings of Barth, I find Barth to be remarkably well-informed about the sophisticated terms of contemporary Roman Catholic debate about analogy, including the work of G. Sohngen and E. Pryzwara. Barth's central objection to the doctrine of analogy in this section appears to be the doctrine's reckless division (in Barth's eyes) of the Being of God into a ‘bare’ God, the subject of natural knowledge, and the God of the Gospel, known in Jesus Christ. But such reckless abstraction cannot be laid at the feet of Roman theologians alone! Barth extensively examines, and finds wanting, J. A. Quenstedt's doctrine of analogy, and the knowledge of God it affords, all stripped, Barth charges, of the justifying grace of Jesus Christ. From these pieces, Barth builds his own ‘doctrine of similarity’, a complex and near-baroque account, which seeks to ground knowledge of God in the living act of his revelation and redemption of sinners. All this makes one tempted to say that Gunton must be wrong in his assessment either of univocal predication or of its roots in the theology of Karl Barth.But passages from the same volume of the Church Dogmatics make one second-guess that first conclusion. When Barth turns from his methodological sections in volume II/1 to the material depiction of the divine perfections, he appears to lay aside every hesitation and speak as directly, as plainly and, it seems, as ‘univocally’ as Gunton could ever desire. Some examples from the perfection of divine righteousness point to Barth's startling use of frank and direct human terms for God's own reality and his unembarrassed use of such terms to set out the very ‘heart of God’.Yet things are never quite what they seem in Barth. A brief comparison between Gunton's univocal predication and Barth's own use of christological predication reveals some fault-lines between the two, and an explanation, based on Barth's own doctrine of justification, is offered in its place.

scholarly journals Libertarianism and Classical Theism: Historical and Conceptual Interrelations

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-20
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Sergeyevich Mishura ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Process Theology ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Classical Theism ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Libertarian Freedom ◽  
Divine Perfections ◽  
Libertarian Free Will ◽  
Divine Goodness

This paper aims to highlight the historical and conceptual interrelations between libertarianism and classical theism (CT). In the first part of the paper, I show that the concept of CT was introduced in the contemporary philosophy of religion by the proponent of process theology Ch. H. Hartshorne to criticize European philosophical and theological tradition. Hartshorne himself thought that classical theism contradicts the libertarian understanding of free will. I further propose two hypotheses to explain the existing association between libertarianism and classical theism in the contemporary philosophy of religion. In the second part, I explore conceptual dependencies and contradictions between libertarianism and CT. I argue that although libertarianism is more suited to address the problem of evil and the doctrine of eternal damnation than theological compatibilism, it nevertheless faces serious problems on the way of reconciliation with CT. To explain evil and eternal damnation libertarian free will have to be understood as having a great value. However, the value of libertarian freedom might be challenged by exploring its contradictions with such divine perfections as divine goodness and divine foreknowledge and the doctrine of divine conservation. I further argue that to solve theological puzzles one needs to develop explicitly theological libertarian understanding of free will that depends on theological values and does not pretend to be compatible with naturalism and atheism.

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