Two Ways of Looking at Three.doc

ATHENS JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES & ARTS

The triune nature of God is one of the most complex doctrines of Christianity, and its complexity is further compounded when one considers the incarnation. However, many of the difficulties and paradoxes associated with our idea of the divine arise from our adherence to reductionist ontology. I will argue that in order to move our theological discourse forward, in respect to divine and human nature, a holistic interpretation of our profession of faith is necessary. The challenge of a holistic interpretation is that it questions our ability to make any statement about the genuine, ontological individuation of persons (both divine and human), and in doing so raises the issue of whether we are ontologically bound to descend to a form of pan(en)theism. In order to address the "inevitable" slide in to pan(en)theism, I will examine the impact of two forms of holistic interpretation, Boolean and Non-Boolean, on our understanding of the world. I tentatively examine the kind of Trinitarian relations that may be allowed within a world governed by Boolean holism.

2016

With characteristic flair, John Thatamanil once said that if theologians are like chickens in the coop of a particular religion, then philosophers are free-range. If so, the contributors to this volume are by editorial choice wild: they have left not only the pens of particular religions but also that of classical theism which has regulated philosophical thought about God for millennia; in some cases, they have stepped out of the farm of theism (personal ultimacy) into the realm of non-theistic ultimacy and beyond. The result of their collective explorations are nine alternative ways to think about God or ultimacy-three pantheistic (roughly, the view that God and the world are identical, often called 'the One'), two panentheistic (roughly, the view that though the world is God, God is more than the world), and four that resist familiar categorization-as well as six critical reflections on these alternatives. The volume's significance is captured well in the words on its back cover that it is "the first contemporary edited collection featuring the work of analytic philosophers of religion covering such a wide range of alternative concepts of God," provided an "only" is inserted before "analytic": other edited volumes that present alternatives to classical theism, such as Hartshorne & Reese (1953), Neville (2001), or Diller & Kasher (2013), hail from multiple disciplinary perspectives. 1 It is a milestone that analytic philosophy of religion is now ready to approach this topic in a sustained collective treatment, and by top scholars in the field at that. One reason to read this book, then, is that it is groundbreaking. A deeper reason is that the volume accomplishes two important goals the editors set for it in their introduction-(a) to "extend the range" of metaphysical options about the divine beyond classical theism (2, 17), vital to those of us convinced that a classical God cannot exist and on a hunt for a God worth the name that can, and (b) to "open the door" to discussion of criteria of adequacy for concepts of God which aim to sort concepts that are genuinely of God from those that aren't (6). Here I will sketch the nine notions that realize (a), adding as we go some comparisons and commentary especially about the problem of evil and the problem of unity (how can the many be 1

Matthew J. Coté, 2024

The doctrine of analogy is of paramount importance in religious epistemology and philosophical theology; one which affects what is communicated about the knowledge of God. If quidditative knowledge begins in the senses, and God is not directly part of sensible reality, it follows that knowledge of God is not quidditative. Further, if the intellectual concept is a product of abstracting quiddities from sensible reality, then it also follows that there is no quidditative concept of God. Aquinas, following from this reasoning and leading into his demonstration of God’s existence with his five ways, states that one can know that God is, but not what God is. Given this, it seems to follow that when one is predicating of God, that such predications are not ultimately a matter of any type of conceptualization through abstraction, but rather a matter of a series of necessary metaphysical judgments rooted in negation, causality, and supereminence, even though originally stemming from our knowledge of delimited acts of being in sensible reality. It is contended that any predication of God that is not purified through this threefold way ends up entailing a delimiting of the Simple Pure Act of Being Itself Subsisting, i.e., God. This dissertation serves to more clearly identify and enunciate the problem of concepts in relation to analogical predication of God, and reiterates a consistent method already proposed by Aquinas, and found augmented in the works of Étienne Gilson, Joseph Owens, and Gregory Rocca. In contrast, those views of predication of God that use or entail abstraction and conceptualization without the necessary purification by the threefold way are shown to be both inconsistent with an existential Thomistic metaphysic and philosophy of human nature, and bring the implication that God’s being is not Qui Est, but rather a delimited being according to some relation of act/potency and essence/existence according to human sensible experience.

Journal of Analytic Theology

With characteristic flair, John Thatamanil once said that if theologians are like chickens in the coop of a particular religion, then philosophers are free-range. If so, the contributors to this volume are by editorial choice wild: they have left not only the pens of particular religions but also that of classical theism which has regulated philosophical thought about God for millennia; in some cases, they have stepped out of the farm of theism (personal ultimacy) into the realm of non-theistic ultimacy and beyond. The result of their collective explorations are nine alternative ways to think about God or ultimacy-three pantheistic (roughly, the view that God and the world are identical, often called 'the One'), two panentheistic (roughly, the view that though the world is God, God is more than the world), and four that resist familiar categorization-as well as six critical reflections on these alternatives. The volume's significance is captured well in the words on its back cover that it is "the first contemporary edited collection featuring the work of analytic philosophers of religion covering such a wide range of alternative concepts of God," provided an "only" is inserted before "analytic": other edited volumes that present alternatives to classical theism, such as Hartshorne & Reese (1953), Neville (2001), or Diller & Kasher (2013), hail from multiple disciplinary perspectives. 1 It is a milestone that analytic philosophy of religion is now ready to approach this topic in a sustained collective treatment, and by top scholars in the field at that. One reason to read this book, then, is that it is groundbreaking. A deeper reason is that the volume accomplishes two important goals the editors set for it in their introduction-(a) to "extend the range" of metaphysical options about the divine beyond classical theism (2, 17), vital to those of us convinced that a classical God cannot exist and on a hunt for a God worth the name that can, and (b) to "open the door" to discussion of criteria of adequacy for concepts of God which aim to sort concepts that are genuinely of God from those that aren't (6). Here I will sketch the nine notions that realize (a), adding as we go some comparisons and commentary especially about the problem of evil and the problem of unity (how can the many be 1

Studia Gilsoniana, 2024

At the beginning of the article, I speak of two ways of reflecting on God: natural and revealed theology. It is a disadvantage that two of them are often pitted against each other. I demonstrate their complementarity, with a focus on the abilities to research natural theology, that is, the philosophy of God. Next is analogy’s part in the cognition of God. Here, there are two issues to consider: finding proof of God’s existence and describing his nature. Most authors believe that analogy plays a part only in describing God’s nature and speak for the analogy of attribution. Demonstrating the existence of God is generally not addressed, taking the fact of God’s existence as already granted. Therefore, analogy ceases to be a focus. However, representatives of realist philosophy, existential Thomism, hold a different belief. They state that analogy can, and should, be applied in the argumentation for the existence of God and for describing His nature. The only problem that still exists is choosing which type of analogy to administer. This very analogy is the analogy of transcendental proportionality. It has been thought of, and is in fact possible, only on the basis of the existential conception of being, which is to be found in the views of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is similar in its structure to the analogy of attribution, as in both there is a primary analogate and secondary analogate. However, its primary analogate is radically differently understood than in the analogy of attribution.

Journal of Analytic Theology

International Journal of English Studies, 2003

Written in the spirit of cognitive semantics, the paper is an attempt at analysing the limited understanding by Christian believers of the Trinitarian dogma as presented in biblical and theological texts. Though ultimately an insoluble mystery for human reason, the dogma can be shown to have ameasure of metaphorical and metonymic coherence. At the same time, the paper claims that human access to transcendental notions is, in a deep sense, inevitably metaphorical, and consists of an elaborate network of mappings of human-sized notions onto the domain of the divine. This network is claimed to be amanifestation ofthe root metaphor GOD-HUMAN. The author further claims that the opposite root metaphor, HUMAN-GOD, constitutes one of the warrants, together with divine inspiration and the context provided by Revelation, of the truth of statements about God made on the basis of the first root metaphor.

The social Trinity is too human, too personal in a creature-like sense, and suspiciously too explicable. Instead, this paper proposes that the divine persons are only analogically personal. The thesis is developed in three parts. The first section presents the turmoil social trinitarians and others have in dealing with the personhood of the divine persons. The second section examines the Summa Theologiae, expounding Aquinas’s treatment of God’s threeness. The final section answers the main question of the paper saying that the divine persons are only analogically personal and calls the reader to embrace the limits of knowledge.