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.
Not exact matches
If the God of
classical theism existed, an objective foundation
for morality would exist.
As it happens, the Times Literary Supplement gave the book to the philosopher Anthony Kenny to review, perhaps because he could never be accused of any parti pris in this debate, since he has in the past leveled his own severe criticisms against
classical Christian
theism for relying on an «outdated Aristotelian cosmology.»
Whatever orthodox believers may think of Kenny's journey over these decades from
classical theism to something vaguer, he is at least an equal - opportunity basher:
For his aversion to absolutism can equally well be employed against the New Atheists, who affect an apodictic absolutism in their argumentation that makes them as impregnable to counterevidence as anything found in a creationist textbook.
In this sense the above argument can be interpreted as an argument
for the coherence of
classical theism.
In other words, Griffin's argument is that process theology presents a much more plausible explanation
for natural evil than can
classical theism.
This long discussion of so - called
classical theism in its Christian version will have served its purpose if it helps us to understand the reason
for the violent antitheistic movements of recent times and to see why some serious thinkers have even said that God is dead.
For this new
theism, the significance of Jesus is found first in his providing the
classical instance of what is always and everywhere operative, although it is working against serious obstacles that yet can not defeat the cosmic thrust toward loving and sharing.
For him,
classical theism, as found in the scholastics and in modern philosophy down to Kant, was neither biblical nor intelligently modern.
So they transferred the concept of infinity from matter to the divine, which laid the foundation
for most of the philosophical moves that have come to be associated with
classical theism.
There is nothing in the theory of evolution, nor in astronomy, or in geology, nor in paleontology, or any other branch of the sciences which contradicts Christianity, or any other type of
theism (except Mormonism — we know scientifically that the Indian peoples of the Americas are not descended from the Jews — which is a key point of belief
for them, much more central than there having been a literal Garden of Eden is
for classical Christianity or Judaism).
Classical theism opts
for the second alternative in the form of conventional views of personal immortality.
But it is then very difficult to see why God would want us to use coercive power or how the
classical God of free will
theism can be criticized
for not coercing.
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.
Classical theism has a penchant
for universality, thus encroaching upon the proper dominion of philosophy, which has its own specific procedures and canons
for evidence.
She critiques
classical theism for modeling divine being on the root metaphor of motion derived from the non-personal physical world.
How are we to account
for this widespread rejection of
classical theism?
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.
These words epitomize the unyielding difficulty confronting
classical theism,
for it can not seem to reconcile God's goodness with his power in the face of the stubborn reality of unexplained evil.
I should now be willing to suggest that it is a willingness to take the axiological feature as ultimately determinative
for the attribution of divinity that characterizes all modern forms of so - called ethical
theism and distinguishes them from the
classical tradition.
Classical theism sees only a single problem here, the question of God's transcendence and immanence,
for which a twofold solution is quite adequate.
For Brightman, «the expansion of God into an omnipotent being» restricted God's benevolence, even though
classical theism asserted both «with equal assurance.»
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.
It provided also the starting point
for the long theological tradition of
classical monopolar
theism in the West, which held that divine perfection was exclusively the perfection of eternal and immutable being.
(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 a beautiful way of thinking about thinking, and
for those who are passionate about pure thought, there is no idea more beautiful than the idea that God is like our ideas.
Martin wonders,
for example, what contradictions I could show in
classical theism.
The ontological argument
for the existence of God can not prove the existence of something that is self - contradictory.22 Because
classical theism has committed itself to basic inconsistencies, no argument can establish its truth.
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.
Now I come close to the theme of this article: one writer, and I have found no other, in the early Middle Ages attacked
classical theism head - on precisely on its two most vulnerable points — its affirmation of, or failure definitely to reject, unqualified theological determinism, and its commitment to endless posthumous careers
for human persons, making them in that respect rivals to God.
For twenty - five centuries of Western philosophy and theology, apart from Judaism, only two forms of philosophical theism were widely known: what I call classical theism and classical pantheism, the latter best known as Stoicism (until Spinoza); the former was chiefly Islamic or Christian, except for some among the Je
For twenty - five centuries of Western philosophy and theology, apart from Judaism, only two forms of philosophical
theism were widely known: what I call
classical theism and
classical pantheism, the latter best known as Stoicism (until Spinoza); the former was chiefly Islamic or Christian, except
for some among the Je
for some among the Jews.