Download File - A2 Philosophy of Religion

Welcome Back!
Philosophy of Religion 13
January 7th, 2014
Mr. Dezilva
Attributes: The Nature of God
• God as:
– Eternal
– Omniscient
– Omnipotent
– Omnibenevolent
• The Philosophical problems that arise from
these concepts
Attributes cont’d
• Boethius
– The Consolations of Philosophy (Book V)
– The views of Boethius on an Eternal and Omniscient
God
– God’s foreknowledge and how it relates to free will
• A Good God
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–
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Does a Good God reward and punish?
God’s Omnibenevolence
Euthyphro Dilemma & Irenaeus
Morality (can it be linked to God?); Kant’s Argument
Quick Note on “A Good God”
• The Theodicy of Irenaeus
– Lived 130 – 202
– Helped form the New Testament
(knew John of the Gospel
Writers)
– Focused on why God allows evil
and suffering to have a place in
the world.
In a nutshell - Irenaeus
• Admitted that God appears to allow evil and
suffering (and that they exists)
• The world was deliberately created with a
mixture of goodness and evil
– This allows humans to grow, learn, and develop
into a mature and free relationship with God.
• There has to be evil in the world for us to be
able to appreciate good
• We were given freedom of choice, this
includes the freedom to make “bad” choices.
Irenaeus cont’d
• We were created in God’s own image – God is
free and can make free decisions.
– God made us in his own image, but we have to
grow into his likeness
– Part of being good is an effort of will
– But, why did God not make us in his own image
and likeness right from the beginning
• New born child example
• Jonah and the Whale
Judeo-Christian Philosophy
• God’s attributes are derived from the
interweaving of Biblical ideas and concepts
from Greek philosophers
• Many ideas seen in this unit are a result of the
Ancient Greek Philosophies studied in AS
– I.e The Prime Mover, Demiurge, use of symbolism,
myth, and analogy
– An anthropomorphized God, an involved God, a
distant God
Okay – back to the round up
God as Eternal
• Two types of Timelines for God
– Atemporal
– Sempiternal
• Philosophical Problems
– God limits his omniscience and omnipotence if
Sempiternal
– God limits his personal relationship, ability to
change if Atemporal
• Important Concepts and Thinkers
– Aquinas & The Man on the Hill
– The Creation Story from Genesis
– Boethius’s “One Glance God”
– Process Theology
– Swinburne  God is everlasting
God as Omnipotent
•Omnipotent refers to:
– God is all-powerful
– God as Pantocrator
– God as the Creator
•Philosophical Problems
– The Paradoxes of the Stone or Free Will Creature
– An unpredictable and random God
– “Pieces on a Chessboard”
– Conflicts with Eternal God
– Conflicts with Omnibenevolent God
• Important Concepts and Thinkers
– Descartes:
“God can do the logically impossible”
– Aquinas:
“he can do everything that is absolutely possible’,
[…]‘everything that does not imply a contradiction
is among those possibilities”
– Anselm:
“A being that than which no greater can be
conceived”
• Important Concepts and Thinkers cont’d
– The Doctrine of Kenosis
– John MacQuarrie:
“God’s limitations are self imposed “
“God’s power is different to that of our own; there
is an element of unknowable”
– Biblical References:
• Sarah and Abraham
• Who then can be saved?’, Jesus says ‘With man this is
impossible, but with God all things are possible.’
Matthew 19:23-26
• Noah’s Ark
God as Omniscient
Omniscience refers to:
– God as “all-knowing”
– There is nothing that He cannot know
– God has no false beliefs; cannot be mistaken
•Philosophical Problems
– If God is even in the slightest not all knowing, then this
affects his omnipotence & omniscience
– If God knew the future and all our moral decisions, do we
have any real free will?
– If he already knows the acts are going to occur, then what
is the purpose of God’s punishments/rewards?
• Furthermore, what is the purpose of morality? Is there such thing?
• Important Concepts and Thinkers
– Kant’s Morality Argument
– Robot Programmer (General argument, not Kant’s)
– Schleiermacher’s Close Friends Analogy
– Swinburne’s Sempiternal God
– John Calvin and Calvinism
Boethius (Omniscience & Eternity)
• In Book V of Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius has
a conversation with Lady Philosophy
• God’s timeline is “all in one” – no past present or
future. BUT, is able to understand our daily
occurrences completely, as they happen, but does
not limit our free will
• Philosophical Problems
– If God knew the future, then he is wrong to reward us or
punish us for our behavior
• Yet the Bible teaches about divine reward and
punishment very clearly
– How can God know something that hasn’t happened yet
and is uncertain?
• And if he does know then it makes the act inevitable and void of
any moral conduct. Thus, making reward/punishment unfair.
– Is God responsible for things that we do if he is all knowing
and knows the act we will do?
• And if he does know and it is unchangeable, then what
is the point of asking God for change via Prayer?
• Important Concepts & Themes
Boethius’s mistake:
God can see things in a different way from the way in which we see them
because humans exists within time, God does not have the same time
constraints we do. Because humans exist within time; our pasts have
happened, a present that is gone in an instant and futures which are
uncertain. This uncertain future means that humans have free choice.
God’s “One Glance” Understanding
God is timeless, and while God can see our past, present and future – he
has perfect knowledge of what we will do.
In Advance
All events occur simultaneously in God’s eternal presence, therefore
there is no “in advance” and it makes no sense to talk about what God
will know in the future (or has in the past)
God as Omnibenevolent
Omnibenevolence refers to:
• All-Good – God is perfectly good
• An All-Loving God only capable of doing Good
– “God is love” (1 John 4:8)
• The Goodness of God
Philosophical Problems:
• The Problem of Evil
• Analogical “Love”
• Favouritism and Unjust Punishment (Dawkins)
• Reward and Punishment
• “Nature’s everyday performances” (Mill)
• Important Concepts and Thinkers:
– Hesed (Old Testament)
– Agape (New Testament)
– “God is the supreme standard of Goodness”
• William Alston
– The Crucified God
• Jurgen Moltmann
– God’s love is an analogy
• St. Thomas Aquinas
– Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma
Possible Exam Questions
1. Critically assess the traditional Christian concept of God being
eternal.
2. If God is omnipotent, then he must be able to do absolutely
anything.’ Discuss
3. ‘If God knows all our moral choices in advance, then we cannot be
justly blamed or rewarded for what we do.’ Discuss
4. If God knows what we are going to do, he has no right to reward
the good and punish the wicked.’
Discuss
5. Critically examine the use of myth as an
approach to understand the nature of God.
6. Critically assess the philosophical problems
raised by the belief that God is omniscient.
OCR Questions
• Critically assess the philosophical problems raised by
belief that God is omniscient.
• Boethius was successful in his argument that God
rewards and punishes justly. Discuss.
• Critically assess the problems for believers who say
that God is omniscient.
• Critically assess the view that the concept of miracle
is inconsistent with belief in a benevolent God.
• Assess the claim that the universe provides no
evidence for the existence of an omnipotent God.
• Evaluate the philosophical problems raised by the
belief that God is eternal.
Plan an essay from last years exam paper:
Evaluate the philosophical problems raised by the belief
that God is eternal. [35]