Sentences with phrase «classical theism by»

This dimension of God's being, however, though hinted at in tentative probings in the Old Testament literature, 2 was indignantly suppressed in classical theism by Greek ideals of perfection, which dictated absolute impassability to God.

This challenges many of the presuppositions of classical theism by overcoming their felt conflicts and contradictions.

Not exact matches

This will be accomplished by comparing two prominent advocates of these respective theisms: classical theist Alvin Plantinga and process theist David Griffin.

The question becomes more pressing when we note that much of the best work on classical theism and Trinitarianism of the last thirty years has been done by Roman Catholic theologians.

In one popular study of the problem of God today, John A. T. Robinson questions the relevance of a theism that would think of God as a heavenly, completely perfect person who resides above the world and mankind.4 The same issue is raised by Harvey Cox, who writes: The willingness of the classical philosophers to allow the God of the Bible to be blurred into Plato's Idea of the Good or Aristotle's Prime Mover was fatal.

We may be excited by process theism, but it is much more likely that Whitehead originally became some sort of classical theist who thought his way into process theism than that he had been a process theist all along.

Hartshorne's analysis in Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes is defective insofar as it recognizes only three possibilities — the two identified by classical theism and the third which is Whitehead's doctrine of the objective immortality of the past.

Hartshorne understands classical theism to be characterized by mistaken conceptions of (1) divine perfection, (2) divine omnipotence, (3) divine omniscience, (4) divine sympathy, (5) immortality, and (6) revelation.

We may then begin this critical reflection upon Hartshorne's «neoclassical theism» or «process theology» with the observation that both black and neoclassical theologies are defined in large part by their opposition to or protest against certain features of classical Western theism.

(2) Unlike classical theism, black theology has never conceived divine omnipotence in a way that entails that whatever happens is entirely determined by God.

The primary difference between the process concept of God as creator - preserver of the world and that of classical theism is that the former insists God ought not be conceived as aloof to and unaffected by what happens in the world.

(6) And finally, classical theism is marked by an erroneous conception of infallible revelation according to which, «The idea of revelation is the idea of special knowledge of God, or of religious truth, possessed by some people and transmitted by them to others» (OOTM 5).

I am encouraged by his acceptance of a substantial part of my criticism of classical theism as found in Aquinas; however, he sides with Aquinas and against me on some issues.

In this scheme the quantifiers «all,» «some,» and «none» are combined with the ideas of «absolute perfection,» «relative perfection,» and «imperfection'to produce seven different conceptions of deity which are conveniently grouped into three broad types of theism: classical theism, within which God is conceived as absolutely perfect in all respects and in no way surpassable; atheistic views, in which there is no being which is in any respect perfect or unsurpassable; and the «new theism,» in which God is in some respects perfect and unsurpassable by others but is surpassable by himself.

But when criticizing the concept of God affirmed by classical free will theism, process theists seem to reverse their position by arguing that a being who could coerce should at times do so.

It seems to me that neoclassical criticisms of classical theism misunderstand the theology of Aquinas by reading him through a too conceptualist rendering of his writings common to much so - called «Thomism.»

So, he claims, though the logical types objection is very powerful (and is devastating for classical theism), it is met by his di - polar concept of God.

By working out a neoclassical theory of nonliteral religious discourse consistent with his neoclassical theism generally, he has not only overcome the notorious contradictions involved in classical theism's use of analogy and other modes of nonliteral language, he has also given good reasons for thinking that our distinctively modern reflection about God results from two movements of thought, not simply from one.

By this I mean that we already have before us a way of conceiving the reality of God, in comparison with which the theism of the classical tradition can be seen to be but a first and rather rough approximation.

Brock identified agape love with the wrong direction of classical (patriarchal) theism in championing «disinterested» love, «dispassionate» love that includes no dynamic interrelationship between Lover and beloved and leaves God utterly unaffected by the creaturely response to God's love.21 Erotic love, by contrast, «connotes intimacy through the subjective engagement of the whole self in a relationship.»

That this was a difficult, if not indeed impossible, undertaking had already been made evident by the parallel efforts of the Jewish thinker, Philo of Alexandria, who has perhaps the best claim to be the founder of classical theism.

Specifically, I have ventured to challenge both of the simplifications whereby the problem before us is most commonly rendered incapable of solution — namely, the simplifications that one can be truly secular only by accepting modern secularism and that one can believe in God only by accepting the claims of classical theism.

As usually presented, then, even by its more sophisticated spokesmen, classical theism requires acceptance of statements about the world, about its origin or end or the happenings within it, which men today are willing to accept, if at all, only with the backing and warrants of science or history.

The second main reason for the rejection of this form of theism is that one can accept it only by affirming the entire classical metaphysical outlook of which it is integrally a part.

In the back if not in the front of our minds, we are aware of the thoroughgoing criticism of classical theism which was so vigorously launched by Spinoza, only to be further confirmed and extended by virtually every major intellectual development since.

We may speak by analogy with Hartshorne's «neoclassical theism» of Whitehead's neoclassical empiricism» precisely because it is a self - conscious revision of the classical tradition on the one hand and can be seen to consist in an analysis of the formally possible doctrines regarding the character and content of experience on the other.

Trinitarian speculation may have spoken more wisely than it knew by providing the basic coordinates for a problem which did not even arise within the horizon of classical theism.

(See the Problem of Evil in Process Theism and Classical Free - Will Theism by William Hasker; Traditional Free Will Theodicy and Process Theodicy: Hasker's Claim for Parity; «Bitten to Death by Ducks»: A Reply to Griffin; On Hasker's Defense of his Parity Claim by David Ray Griffin (see www.religion-online.org.)

Classical theism is characterized by a mechanical universe with God outside it.

As Hasker emphasizes, his free will version of traditional theism differs from the classical version, held by Augustine, Thomas, Luther, and Calvin, precisely on this point — that this classical version held that all of our feelings, thoughts, and actions are in reality wholly determined by God, so that we have freedom only in a compatibilist sense — or, otherwise stated, that our feeling of freedom is an illusion.

More recently, 3 however, I have advocated reserving the term «classical theism» for the version of traditional theism affirmed by classical theologians such as Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas, according to which God is timeless, immutable, and impassible in all respects — a doctrine that implies that creaturely freedom must be denied or affirmed at most in a Pickwickian, compatibilist sense.

Defenders of classical theism often implicitly use the latter criterion, claiming they have defended their God's failure to prevent horrendous evils by simply pointing out that there might be some reason, knowable only by God, as to why it was good not to intervene.15 I would say, in any case, that it need not be «clear» in a strong sense of the term.

Two traits of classical theism were that it either (like Stoicism and Spinozism) clearly and consistently denied human freedom (in the straightforward sense of actions being not wholly determined by their causal conditions) or else ambiguously or contradictorily affirmed and denied causal determinism — truly classically in Aquinas's statement that God strictly causes our actions but in such fashion that we were also free to act otherwise.

It is of great interest to see how classical theism is affected by modern physics.