Classical and revisionary theism on the divine as personal: a rapprochement?

Burns, Elizabeth

doi:10.1007/s11153-014-9500-3

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…If God is a property, then he isn't a person but a mere abstract object; he has no knowledge, awareness, power, love or life" (Plantinga 1980, 47). Page (2019), Stump (2016), Burns (2015) and Grimi (2018) also affirm this line of thinking. On the affirmative side of the debate, Swinburne has claimed that it is normative for Christians to understand God as a person: viewing God as a person is "the most elementary claim of theism" (Swinburne 1993, 101).…”

Section: Introduction: Why Psychological Science May Help Us Understand and Relate To God As Personmentioning

confidence: 71%

The Dialogical Self Analogy for the Godhead: Recasting the “God is a Person” Debate

Harrower

2021

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May God may be understood and referred to as a “person”? This is a live debate in contemporary theological and philosophical circles. However, despite the attention this debate has received, the vital question of how to account for God’s trinitarian nature has been mostly overlooked. Due to trinitarian concerns about the unqualified use of “person” as an analogy for the Godhead, I intervene in this debate with a two-fold proposal. The first is that proponents of using a person as an analogy for the Godhead will be better served by using a psychologically informed analogy of a “self” instead. In particular, the Dialogical Self model of a person holds much promise. In what follows, I argue that the “Dialogical Self Analogy” for the Godhead is more likely to uphold God’s trinitarian nature, avoid trinitarian confusion and related problems than “person” analogies do. The primary benefit of speaking of God as a Dialogical Self is that it offers a psychologically modelled analogy for God, whilst avoiding the language of person, yet strongly taking into account God’s trinitarian nature. This has the important benefit of preserving the concept and language of “person” for the trinitarian persons (the prosopa/hypostases), and hence avoiding the linguistic, conceptual and ecumenical confusion that arises when referring to the Godhead as a person. The strength of using the model and language of a Dialogical Self as an analogy for the Godhead (instead of person) is demonstrated by showing its compatibility with Erickson’s criteria for describing the Trinity.

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Section: Introduction: Why Psychological Science May Help Us Understand and Relate To God As Personmentioning

confidence: 71%

The Dialogical Self Analogy for the Godhead: Recasting the “God is a Person” Debate

Harrower

2021

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“…I'm avoiding Davies' terms for two reasons: they seem tendentious, and they're bound up with questions about divine simplicity, whether God is a person, theological predication, and moreall beyond the scope of the present study and whether God shares any categories with other beings. For more on classical theism and its controversies, seeBurns (2015).43 SoOppy (2014, p. 1): "to be God is just to be the one and only god, where to be a god is to be a superhuman being or entity who has and exercises power over the natural world." See alsoTuggy (2017).…”

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confidence: 99%

Monotheism and Human Nature

Bailey

2021

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The main question of this Element is how the existence, supremacy, and uniqueness of an almighty and immaterial God bear on our own nature. It aims to uncover lessons about what we are by thinking about what God might be. A dominant theme is that Abrahamic monotheism is a surprisingly hospitable framework within which to defend and develop the view that we are wholly material beings. But the resulting materialism cannot be of any standard variety. It demands revisions and twists on the usual views. We can indeed learn about ourselves by learning about God. One thing we learn is that, though we are indeed wholly material beings, we're not nearly as ordinary as we might seem.

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“…The believer may engage with the divine by reading the scriptures of his/ her religious tradition and/or by attending a temple, church or mosque in order to listen to the teaching of religious professionals and to participate in religious rituals. The believer may also pray, either individually or in the context of his/her community, and such prayer may be understood as a form of meditation, perhaps focusing on situations of difficulty in his/her own life, the lives of those with whom 1 3 he/she comes into contact, or the lives of people of the world more generally, and may be informed by the reading of scripture, the teaching of religious professionals and discussion with other members of his/her religious community (see further Burns 2014). Alternatively, perhaps, if the unconscious is equated with God, an idea which Roderick Main suggests may be found in the work of Carl Jung (1875Jung ( -1961 (Main 2017(Main , 1108, who unequivocally does say that God is 'Reality itself' and that humankind is part of this Reality (Jung 1969(Jung [1952, paragraph 631, quoted in Main 2017Main , 1109, then prayer may be understood as an attempt to connect with the mind of God.…”

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How to prove the existence of God: an argument for conjoined panentheism

Burns

2018

Int J Philos Relig

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This article offers an argument for a form of panentheism in which the divine is conceived as both 'God the World' and 'God the Good'. 'God the World' captures the notion that the totality of everything which exists is 'in' God, while acknowledging that, given evil and suffering, not everything is 'of' God. 'God the Good' encompasses the idea that God is also the universal concept of Goodness, akin to Plato's Form of the Good as developed by Iris Murdoch, which is inextricably conjoined with God the World because it is the nature of the world which determines the nature of perfect Goodness. This form of 'conjoined' panentheism yields a concept of divine personhood which includes both divine agency and human/divine engagement. God the Good is an agent of change by providing human persons with a standard of Goodness against which to measure the goodness of their own actions, while God the World provides the physical embodiment through which God acts. Human engagement with the divine may take a number of forms and may lead to moral action, the means by which the divine acts upon the world and changes it for the better.

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Classical and revisionary theism on the divine as personal: a rapprochement?

Cited by 5 publications

References 17 publications

The Dialogical Self Analogy for the Godhead: Recasting the “God is a Person” Debate

The Dialogical Self Analogy for the Godhead: Recasting the “God is a Person” Debate

Monotheism and Human Nature

How to prove the existence of God: an argument for conjoined panentheism

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