This book begins with a careful taxonomy of divine attributes. It continues with detailed examinations of: divine infinity; divine simplicity; divine perfection; divine necessity; omnipotence; omniscience; divine goodness; divine beauty; divine fundamentality; divine will; divine freedom; etc.

The doctrine of God’s absolute simplicity denies the possibility of real distinctions in God. It is, e.g., impossible that God have any kind of parts or any intrinsic accidental properties, or that there be real distinctions among God’s essential properties or between any of them and God himself. After showing that some of the counter-intuitive implications of the doctrine can readily be made sense of, the authors identify the apparent incompatibility of God’s simplicity and God’s free choice as a special (...) difficulty and associate it with two others: the apparent incompatibilities between essential omnipotence and essential goodness, and between perfect goodness and moral goodness. Since all three of these difficulties are associated with a certain understanding of the nature of God’s will, the authors base their resolution of them on an account of will in general and of God’s will in particular, drawing on Aquinas’s theory of will.Taking creation as their paradigm of divine free choice, the authors develop a solution of the principal incompatibility based on three claims: God’s acts of choice are both free and conditionally necessitated; the difference between absolutely and conditionallynecessitated acts of will is not a real distinction in God; and the conditional necessity of God’s acts of will is compatible with contingency in the objects of those acts. The heart of their solution consists in their attempt to make sense of and support those claims.The authors extend their solution to cover the two associated apparent incompatibilities as well.The article concludes with observations on the importance of the doctrine of God’s absolute simplicity for resolving problems in religious morality and in the cosmological argument. (shrink)

[I] Divine Simplicity: God and His Existence Types of Divine Simplicity Of the properties ascribed to God in Aquinas' natural theology, we may call one sort ...

This book investigates what it means, and whether it is coherent, to say that there is a God.

Sets of contingent objects, perhaps, are as contingent as their members; but properties, propositions, numbers and states of affairs, it seems, are objects whose non-existence is quite impossible. If so, however, how are they related to God? Suppose God has a nature: a property he has essentially that includes each property essential to him. Does God have a nature? And if he does, is there a conflict between God's sovereignty and his having a nature? How is God related to such (...) abstract objects as properties and propositions? These are the questions I want to explore. - Introduction. (shrink)

The paper aims for an improvement of the so-called argument from consciousness while focusing on the first-person-perspective as a unique feature of consciousness that opens the floor for a theistic explanation. As a side effect of knowledge arguments, which are necessary to keep a posterior materialism off bounds, the paper proposes an interpretation of divine knowledge as knowledge of things rather than knowledge of facts.

There is a traditional theistic doctrine, known as the doctrine of divine simplicity, according to which God is an absolutely simple being, completely devoid of any metaphysical complexity. On the standard understanding of this doctrine—as epitomized in the work of philosophers such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas—there are no distinctions to be drawn between God and his nature, goodness, power, or wisdom. On the contrary, God is identical with each of these things, along with anything else that can be predicated (...) of him intrinsically. (shrink)

Before Duns Scotus, most philosophers agreed that God is identical with His necessary intrinsic attributes--omnipotence, omniscience, etc. This Identity Thesis was a component of widely held doctrines of divine simplicity, which stated that God exemplifies no metaphysical distinctions, including that between subject and attribute. The Identity Thesis seems to render God an attribute, an abstract object. This paper shows that the Identity Thesis follows from a basic theistic belief and does not render God abstract. If also discusses how one might (...) move from the Identity Thesis to the full doctrine of divine simplicity and shows that the Identity Thesis generates a new ontological argument. (shrink)

E. J. Lowe, a prominent figure in contemporary metaphysics, sets out and defends his theory of what there is. His four-category ontology is a metaphysical system which recognizes four fundamental categories of beings: substantial and non-substantial particulars and substantial and non-substantial universals. Lowe argues that this system has an explanatory power which is unrivalled by more parsimonious theories and that this counts decisively in its favour. He shows that it provides a powerful explanatory framework for a unified account of causation, (...) dispositions, natural laws, natural necessity and many other related matters, thus constituting a full metaphysical foundation for natural science. (shrink)

_The Divine Attributes_is an engaging analysis of the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam from the perspective of rational theology.

Properties and objects are everywhere, but remain a philosophical mystery. Douglas Ehring argues that the idea of tropes--properties and relations understood as particulars--provides the best foundation for a metaphysical account of properties and objects. He develops and defends a new theory of trope nominalism.

_From one of the most revered scholars of religion, an incisive explanation of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great faiths_ Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion—God—frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great theistic (...) faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanity’s knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical “moments”—being, consciousness, and bliss—the author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points. Thoroughly dismissing such blatant misconceptions as the deists' concept of God, as well as the fundamentalist view of the Bible as an objective historical record, Hart provides a welcome antidote to simplistic manifestoes. In doing so, he plumbs the depths of humanity’s experience of the world as powerful evidence for the reality of God and captures the beauty and poetry of traditional reflection upon the divine. (shrink)

Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussion—God—frequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word “God” functions in the world’s great theistic faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanity’s (...) knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical “moments”—being, consciousness, and bliss—the author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points. Thoroughly dismissing such blatant misconceptions as the deists' concept of God, as well as the fundamentalist view of the Bible as an objective historical record, Hart provides a welcome antidote to simplistic manifestoes. In doing so, he plumbs the depths of humanity’s experience of the world as powerful evidence for the reality of God and captures the beauty and poetry of traditional reflection upon the divine. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz wird eine axiomatisierte logische Rekonstmktion der Platonischen Prädikationstheorie vorgeschlagen, aufbauend auf der Ähnlichkeitsrelation. Die Theorie ist konsistent und trivial. Selbst-Prädikation bereitet darin keine Schwierigkeiten und das Dritte-Mann-Argument wird als harmlos aufgezeigt. Es werden Kriterien dafür, daß etwas ein Standardgegenstand (eine Form oder Idee) ist, aufgestellt und ausgeführt, daß diese die Platonische Ideentheorie implizieren. Die Grenzen von Piatons Prädikationstheorie werden klar gemacht; sie ist von der adjektivischen (linguistischen) Prädikation abgeleitet und kann ontologisch nur diesen Typ der Prädikation abdecken, (...) nicht aber substantivische Prädikation. Schließlich wird gezeigt, daß die Existenz Gottes in der Platonischen Prädikationstheorie bewiesen werden kann. (shrink)

In diesem Aufsatz wird eine axiomatisierte logische Rekonstmktion der Platonischen Prädikationstheorie vorgeschlagen, aufbauend auf der Ähnlichkeitsrelation. Die Theorie ist konsistent und trivial. Selbst-Prädikation bereitet darin keine Schwierigkeiten und das Dritte-Mann-Argument wird als harmlos aufgezeigt. Es werden Kriterien dafür, daß etwas ein Standardgegenstand (eine Form oder Idee) ist, aufgestellt und ausgeführt, daß diese die Platonische Ideentheorie implizieren. Die Grenzen von Piatons Prädikationstheorie werden klar gemacht; sie ist von der adjektivischen (linguistischen) Prädikation abgeleitet und kann ontologisch nur diesen Typ der Prädikation abdecken, (...) nicht aber substantivische Prädikation. Schließlich wird gezeigt, daß die Existenz Gottes in der Platonischen Prädikationstheorie bewiesen werden kann. (shrink)