Sentences with phrase «necessary mode of existence»

He would say this on the ground that the reason we would not make the same statement about any particular being, e.g., elephants or unicorns, is precisely because it is contradictory to assert of any particular being that it has the necessary mode of existence.

Not exact matches

There is then no contradiction in supposing that a being whose existence is necessary may nevertheless alter in some respects in the mode of that existence.

The problem that is raised by Hartshorne's understanding of God's mode of existence, granting his view that God is not (as with Whitehead) a single occasion but a series of occasions, seems to be rather the question of what makes this series necessary and so unending.

Hartshomne hails as Anselm's great discovery the ideas that God's mode of being is utterly unique in his perfection or unsurpassability and that contingent existence is inferior to necessary existence.72