Results for 'Divine perfections'

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  1. The Luckiest of All Possible Beings: Divine Perfections and Constitutive Luck.Andre Leo Rusavuk - 2024 - Sophia 63 (2):259-277.
    Many theists conceive of God as a perfect being, i.e., as that than which none greater is metaphysically possible. On this grand view of God, it seems plausible to think that such a supreme and maximally great being would not be subject to luck of any sort. Given the divine perfections, God is completely insulated from luck. However, I argue that the opposite is true: precisely because God is perfect, he is subject to a kind of luck called (...)
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  2. Divine Forgetting and Perfect Being Theology.Christopher Willard-Kyle - forthcoming - Faith and Philosophy.
    I sympathetically explore the thesis that God literally forgets sins. I articulate some altruistic God might have for forgetting certain sins. If so, then God may have altruistic reasons to relinquish a great-making trait (omniscience). But according to traditional Anselmian perfect being theology, God is necessarily perfect and so incapable of acting on these altruistic reasons. More broadly, a God who necessarily has all the perfections is a God who is incapable of making a certain kind of sacrifice: God (...)
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  3. Why the One Cannot Have Parts: Plotinus on Divine Simplicity, Ontological Independence, and Perfect Being Theology.Caleb M. Cohoe - 2017 - Philosophical Quarterly 67 (269):751-771.
    I use Plotinus to present absolute divine simplicity as the consequence of principles about metaphysical and explanatory priority to which most theists are already committed. I employ Phil Corkum’s account of ontological independence as independent status to present a new interpretation of Plotinus on the dependence of everything on the One. On this reading, if something else (whether an internal part or something external) makes you what you are, then you are ontologically dependent on it. I show that this (...)
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  4. New Puzzles About Divine Attributes.Moti Mizrahi - 2013 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 5 (2):147-157.
    According to traditional Western theism, God is maximally great (or perfect). More explicitly, God is said to have the following divine attributes: omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. In this paper, I present three puzzles about this conception of a maximally great (or perfect) being. The first puzzle about omniscience shows that this divine attribute is incoherent. The second puzzle about omnibenevolence and omnipotence shows that these divine attributes are logically incompatible. The third puzzle about perfect rationality and omnipotence (...)
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  5. An Argument from Divine Beauty Against Divine Simplicity.Matthew Baddorf - 2017 - Topoi 36 (4):657-664.
    Some versions of the doctrine of divine simplicity imply that God lacks really differentiated parts. I present a new argument against these views based on divine beauty. The argument proceeds as follows: God is beautiful. If God is beautiful, then this beauty arises from some structure. If God’s beauty arises from a structure, then God possesses really differentiated parts. If these premises are true, then divine simplicity is false. I argue for each of the argument’s premises and (...)
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  6. On Perfect Goodness.J. Gregory Keller - 2010 - Sophia 49 (1):29-36.
    God is typically conceived as perfectly good and necessarily so, in two senses: in terms of always performing the best possible act and in terms of having maximal moral worth. Yet any being that freely performs the best act she can must be accorded greater moral worth for any such action than a being that does so necessarily. I conclude that any being that performs the best possible act of necessity cannot also have maximal moral worth, making the concept of (...)
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  7. Possibilites for divine freedom.Simon Kittle - 2016 - Roczniki Filozoficzne 64 (4):93-123.
    I examine three accounts of divine freedom. I argue that two recent accounts which attempt to explain God’s freedom without appealing to alternative possibilities fail. I then show how a view of divine freedom based on Robert Adams’s idea that God’s grace means he has no obligation to create the best world is able to explain how God can be free while also being perfectly good and perfectly rational.
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  8. Divine Freedom and Free Will Defenses.W. Paul Franks - 2015 - Heythrop Journal 56 (1):108-119.
    This paper considers a problem that arises for free will defenses when considering the nature of God's own will. If God is perfectly good and performs praiseworthy actions, but is unable to do evil, then why must humans have the ability to do evil in order to perform such actions? This problem has been addressed by Theodore Guleserian, but at the expense of denying God's essential goodness. I examine and critique his argument and provide a solution to the initial problem (...)
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  9. Divine Openness for Physical Relationship.Pavel Butakov - 2021 - Roczniki Filozoficzne 69 (3):141-161.
    The success of the atheistic hiddenness argument depends on the “consciousness constraint” it imposes on the divine-human loving relationship: namely, that this relationship requires human conscious awareness of being in the relationship with God. I challenge the truth of this proposition by introducing the concept of a physical relationship with God that is not subject to this constraint. I argue, first, that a physical relationship with God is metaphysically possible; second, that its plausibility is supported by natural theology; and (...)
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  10. Love, Justice, and Divine Simplicity.Everett Fulmer - 2019 - In Ingolf Dalferth (ed.), Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of Religion: Love and Justice. Mohr Siebeck.
    This paper raises an underappreciated paradox for classical theism. Love seems to be an inherently biased and partial relation. Justice seems to require the opposite, detached impartiality (think of the attributes of the just judge). But if these are conceptual facts, then classical theism is guilty of ascribing inconsistent attributes to God: perfect love and perfect justice. I resolve this paradox in a manner that weighs in favor of the principle of divine simplicity.
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  11. Divine Simplicity and the Grammar of God-talk: Comments on Hughes, Tapp, and Schärtl.S. J. Otto Muck - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 10 (2):89-104.
    Different opinions about the simplicity of God may be connected with different understandings of how abstract terms are used to name the properties which are affirmed of a being. If these terms are taken to signify parts of that being, this being is not a simple one. Thomas Aquinas, who attributes essence, existence and perfections to God, nevertheless thinks that these are not different parts of God. When essence, existence and perfections are attributed to God, they all denominate (...)
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  12. The Problems of Divine Hiddenness and Divine Inscrutability.Dan Linford - 2019 - In Graham Oppy & Joseph W. Koterski (eds.), Theism and Atheism: Opposing Viewpoints in Philosophy. Farmington Hills: MacMillan Reference.
    This is a forthcoming section for the book "Theism and Atheism: Opposing Arguments in Philosophy", edited by Graham Oppy, Gregory Dawes, Evan Fales, Joseph Koterski, Mashhad Al-Allaf, Robert Fastiggi, and David Shatz. I was asked to write a brief essay on divine hiddenness and divine inscrutability. I argue that theism is trapped between two opposite poles. On one end, we encounter an argument developed by John Schellenberg. God is understood as a being who, in virtue of God's perfect (...)
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  13. Divine Hiddenness and the Concept of God in advance.Roberto Di Ceglie - 2019 - International Philosophical Quarterly.
    John Schellenberg’s version of the divine hiddenness argument is based on a concept of God as an omnipotent, morally perfect, and ontologically perfect being. I show that Schellenberg develops his argument in a way that is inconsistent with each of these aspects, from which it follows that the argument in question proves to be unsustainable.
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  14. Is God Perfectly Good In Islam.Seyma Yazici - 2022 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 18 (2):(SI9)5-33.
    Based on a question posed by global philosophy of religion project regarding the absence of literal attribution of omnibenevolence to God in the Qur’ān, this paper aims to examine how to understand perfect goodness in Islam. I will first discuss the concept of perfect goodness and suggest that perfect goodness is not an independent attribute on its own and it is predicated on other moral attributes of God without which the concept of perfect goodness could hardly be understood. I will (...)
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  15. Simply Impossible: A Case Against Divine Simplicity.R. T. Mullins - 2013 - Journal of Reformed Theology 7 (2):181-203.
    Within contemporary philosophical theology the doctrine of divine simplicity has regained attention. There are several new defenses of simplicity in the literature. One of the more surprising, and troubling, aspects of the contemporary defenses amongst Christian philosophers and theologians is a seeming lack of understanding about how radical the doctrine of divine simplicity truly is. As such, I wish to do a few things in this paper. First, systematically articulate the doctrine of divine simplicity. Second, argue that (...)
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  16. Providence, Contingency, and the Perfection of the Universe.Ignacio Silva - 2015 - Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences 2 (2):137-157.
    In this paper, I present and analyse the theological reasons given by contemporary authors such as Robert J. Russell, Thomas Tracy and John Polkinghorne, as well as thirteenth‑century scholar Thomas Aquinas, to admit that the created universe requires being intrinsically contingent in its causing, in particular referring to their doctrines of providence. Contemporary authors stress the need of having indeterminate events within the natural world to allow for God’s providential action within creation, whereas Aquinas focuses his argument on the idea (...)
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  17. Can an Ancient Argument of Carneades on Cardinal Virtues and Divine Attributes be Used to Disprove the Existence of God?Douglas Walton - 1999 - Philo 2 (2):5-13.
    An ancient argument attributed to the philosopher Carneades is presented that raises critical questions about the concept of an all-virtuous Divine being. The argument is based on the premises that virtue involves overcoming pains and dangers, and that only a being that can suffer or be destroyed is one for whom there are pains and dangers. The conclusion is that an all-virtuous Divine (perfect) being cannot exist. After presenting this argument, reconstructed from sources in Sextus Empiricus and Cicero, (...)
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  18. Epistemic paradox as a solution to divine hiddenness.Amy Seymour - 2023 - Perichoresis 21 (4):86-100.
    I offer a new, limited solution to divine hiddenness based on a particular epistemic paradox: sometimes, knowing about a desired outcome or relevant features of that desired outcome would prevent the outcome in question from occurring. I call these cases epistemically self-defeating situations. This solution, in essence, says that divine hiddenness or silence is a necessary feature of at least some morally excellent or desirable states of affairs. Given the nature of the paradox, an omniscient being cannot completely (...)
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  19. On Modal Arguments against Perfect Goodness.Michael Almeida - 2024 - In Mirosław Szatkowski (ed.), Ontology of Divinity. Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 183-194.
    It is commonly believed that intrinsically bad possible worlds are inconsistent with the perfect goodness of God. A perfectly good being could not exist in possible worlds that are intrinsically bad. Indeed it is widely believed that possible worlds that are insufficiently good are inconsistent with a perfectly good God. Modal atheological arguments aim to show that, since the pluriverse includes intrinsically bad worlds and insufficiently good worlds, there necessarily does not exist a perfectly good God. I show that modal (...)
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  20. Mimetic Perfection: St Gregory Of Nyssa's Poetry of the Self.Timm Heinbokel - 2020 - St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 64 (3-4):97-128.
    “Christianity is a μίμησις of the divine nature.” This definition of what it means to be a Christian, given by St Gregory of Nyssa in his letter De pro- fessione Christiana, employs a term commonly translated as “imitation” or “representation.” Even a brief study of some of the seminal sources of classical Greek thought, however, will show that the concept of mimesis surpasses any of these translations and effortlessly crosses the boundaries of the sphere of aesthetics, towards the fundamental (...)
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  21. Divine Intentions and the Problem of Evil.Justin Mooney - 2019 - Religious Studies 55 (2):215-234.
    I develop a model of providence on which God brings about good states of affairs by means of evil states of affairs, but without intending the latter. The model's key ingredient is a backward-looking counterpart of the distinction between intended and merely foreseen consequences of an action: namely, a distinction between intended and merely foreseen means to an end. The model enables greater-good theodicies to avoid worries about whether a perfect being could intend evil.
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  22. The Argument from Divine Hiddenness.Daniel Howard-Snyder - 1996 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (3):433 - 453.
    Do we rightly expect a perfectly loving God to bring it about that, right now, we reasonably believe that He exists? It seems so. For love at its best desires the well-being of the beloved, not from a distance, but up close, explicitly participating in her life in a personal fashion, allowing her to draw from that relationship what she may need to flourish. But why suppose that we would be significantly better off were God to engage in an explicit, (...)
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  23. Knowing in Aristotle part 2: Technē, phronēsis, sophia, and divine cognitive activities.Caleb Murray Cohoe - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 17 (1):e12799.
    In this second of a 2-part survey of Aristotle’s epistemology, I present an overview of Aristotle’s views on technē (craft or excellent productive reason) and phronēsis (practical wisdom or excellent practical reason). For Aristotle, attaining the truth in practical matters involves actually doing the right action. While technē and phronēsis are rational excellences, for Aristotle they are not as excellent or true as epistēmē or nous because the kinds of truth that they grasp are imperfect and because they are excellent (...)
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  24. Divine Emanation as Cosmic Origin: Ibn Sīnā and His Critics.Syamsuddin Arif - 2012 - TSAQAFAH - Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization 8 (2):331-346.
    The question of cosmic beginning has always attracted considerable attention from serious thinkers past and present. Among many contesting theories that have emerged, that of emanation was appropriated by Muslim philosophers like Ibn Sînâ in order to reconcile the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of matter with the teaching of al-Qur’ân on the One Creator-God. According to this theory, the universe, which comprises a multitude of entities, is generated from a transcendent Being, the One, that is unitary, through the medium (...)
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  25. A Mathematical Model of Divine Infinity.Eric Steinhart - 2009 - Theology and Science 7 (3):261-274.
    Mathematics is obviously important in the sciences. And so it is likely to be equally important in any effort that aims to understand God in a scientifically significant way or that aims to clarify the relations between science and theology. The degree to which God has any perfection is absolutely infinite. We use contemporary mathematics to precisely define that absolute infinity. For any perfection, we use transfinite recursion to define an endlessly ascending series of degrees of that perfection. That series (...)
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  26. Can Any Divine Punishment be Morally Justified?Laurence Carlin - 2003 - Philo 6 (2):280-298.
    A traditional and widespread belief among theists is that God administers punishment for sins and/or immoral actions. In this paper, Iargue that there is good reason to believe that the infliction of any suffering on humans by God (i.e., a perfectly just being) is morally unjustified. This is important not only because it conflicts with a deeply entrenched religious belief, but also because, as I show, a number of recent argumentative strategies employed by theistic philosophers require that divine punishment (...)
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  27. Eternal God: Divine Atemporality in Thomas Aquinas.John H. Boyer - 2014 - In Darci N. Hill (ed.), News from the Raven: Essays from Sam Houston State University on Medieval and Renaissance Thought. Cambridge Scholars Press. pp. 262-285.
    The recent trend among many philosophers of religion has been to interpret divine eternity as an everlasting temporality in which an omnitemporal God exists in and throughout the whole of time. This is in contrast to the classical account of divine eternity as atemporal, immutable existence. In this paper, Aquinas' use of Boethius's definition of eternity as “the whole, perfect, and simultaneous possession of endless life” is analyzed and explained in contradistinction to Aristotle's definition of time. This analysis (...)
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  28. Fleeing the Divine: Plato's Rejection of the Ahedonic Ideal in the Philebus.Suzanne Obdrzalek - 2010 - In John M. Dillon & Luc Brisson (eds.), Plato's Philebus: selected papers from the Eighth Symposium Platonicum. Sankt Augustin: Academia. pp. 209-214.
    Note: "Next to Godliness" (Apeiron) is an expanded version of this paper. -/- According to Plato's successors, assimilation to god (homoiosis theoi) was the end (telos) of the Platonic system. There is ample evidence to support this claim in dialogues ranging from the Symposium through the Timaeus. However, the Philebus poses a puzzle for this conception of the Platonic telos. On the one hand, Plato states that the gods are beings beyond pleasure while, on the other hand, he argues that (...)
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  29. Can God’s Goodness Save the Divine Command Theory from Euthyphro?Jeremy Koons - 2012 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (1):177-195.
    Recent defenders of the divine command theory like Adams and Alston have confronted the Euthyphro dilemma by arguing that although God’s commands make right actions right, God is morally perfect and hence would never issue unjust or immoral commandments. On their view, God’s nature is the standard of moral goodness, and God’s commands are the source of all obligation. I argue that this view of divine goodness fails because it strips God’s nature of any features that would make (...)
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  30. What if God commanded something horrible? A pragmatics-based defence of divine command metaethics.Philipp Kremers - 2021 - Religious Studies 57 (4):597–617.
    The objection of horrible commands claims that divine command metaethics is doomed to failure because it is committed to the extremely counterintuitive assumption that torture of innocents, rape, and murder would be morally obligatory if God commanded these acts. Morriston, Wielenberg, and Sinnott-Armstrong have argued that formulating this objection in terms of counterpossibles is particularly forceful because it cannot be simply evaded by insisting on God’s necessary perfect moral goodness. I show that divine command metaethics can be defended (...)
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  31. Miracles and the Perfection of Being: The Theological Roots of Scientific Concepts.Alex V. Halapsis - 2016 - Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research 9:70-77.
    Purpose of the article is to study the Western worldview as a framework of beliefs in probable supernatural encroachment into the objective reality. Methodology underpins the idea that every cultural-historical community envisions the reality principles according to the beliefs inherent to it which accounts for the formation of the unique “universes of meanings”. The space of history acquires the Non-Euclidean properties that determine the specific cultural attitudes as well as part and parcel mythology of the corresponding communities. Novelty consists in (...)
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  32. Worship and the Problem of Divine Achievement.John Pittard - 2021 - Faith and Philosophy 38 (1):65-90.
    Gwen Bradford has plausibly argued that one attains achievement only if one does something one finds difficult. It is also plausible that one must attain achievement to be worthy of “agential” praise, praise that is appropriately directed to someone on the basis of things that redound to their credit. These claims pose a challenge to classical theists who direct agential praise to God, since classical theism arguably entails that none of God’s actions are difficult for God. I consider responses to (...)
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  33. Moser's Criticism on Divine Hiddenness Argument نقد موزر بر استدلال خفای الاهی.Sayyed Nasirahmad Hossaini - 2015 - Journal of Philosophical Theological Research 17 (68):27-50.
    Canadian Philosopher, John L. Schellenberg, formally proposed and formulated "Divine Hiddenness Argument" in 1993 for the first time. In this atheistic argument, he states that God does not provide sufficient evidence for His existence at least to some people for some times, thus He is hidden. According to his argument which is based on God’s perfect love, Schellenberg believes that if God perfectly loves people as his creatures, He will provide sufficient evidence for his existence to them and therefore (...)
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  34. İbn Sînâ ve Molla Sadrâ’da İlâhi Erek Problemi The Problem of Divine Intentionalist in Avicenna and Mulla Sadra.Sedat Baran - 2019 - Cumhuriyet İlahiyat Dergisi - Cumhuriyet Theology Journal 23 (3):1101-1120.
    Divine intention is an important problem for both philosophy and Kalam. This problem has two aspects as the subject and action of the intention. The intention of the subject occurs for the motion or the action itself. The intention of the action is to reach the motion or the action itself. According to this, when a person travels to Mecca to visit Kaaba, the visit is the intention of the subject and the journey is the intention of the action. (...)
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  35.  89
    We Deserve It: An Augustinian Response to Divine Hiddenness Arguments.James Dominic Rooney - forthcoming - New Blackfriars.
    Significant attention as been devoted to the problem of ‘divine hiddenness’ proposed by JL Shellenberg. I propose a novel response that involves denying part of the empirical premise in divine hiddenness arguments, which holds that nonresistant nonbelievers are capable of relationship with God. While Plantinga and others in ‘reformed’ epistemology have at times appealed to original sin as an explanation for divine hiddenness, such responses might seem outlandish to many, given the way that many find nonbelievers to (...)
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  36. Thomistic Response to the Theory of Evolution: Aquinas on Natural Selection and the Perfection of the Universe.Mariusz Tabaczek - 2015 - Theology and Science 13 (3):325-344.
    Neither Aristotle nor Aquinas assumes the reality of the evolution of species. Their systems of thought, however, remain open to the new data, offering an essential contribution to the ongoing debate between scientific, philosophical, and theological aspects of the theory of evolution. After discussing some key issues of substance metaphysics in its encounter with the theory of evolution (hylomorphism, transformism of species, teleology, chance, the principle of proportionate causation), I present a Thomistic response to its major hypotheses. Concerning the philosophy (...)
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  37. (1 other version)Aquinas’s Shiny Happy People: Perfect Happiness and the Limits of Human Nature.Christina Van Dyke - 2014 - In Christina VanDyke (ed.), Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Religion. pp. 269-291.
    In Aquinas's account of the beatific vision, human beings are joined to God in a never-ending act of contemplation of the divine essence: a state which utterly fulfills the human drive for knowledge and satisfies every desire of the human heart. In this paper, I argue that this state represents less a fulfillment of human nature, however, than a transcendence of that nature. Furthermore, what’s transcended is not incidental on a metaphysical, epistemological, or moral level.
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  38. “Re-envisioning a Caitanya Vaiṣṇava ‘Perfect Being Theology’ and Demonstrating Its Theodical Implications”.Akshay Gupta - 2020 - Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies 1 (33):42-52.
    Popular imaginations and receptions of Hinduism often neglect to consider its theological dimensions that conceive of the divine reality along conceptual pathways analogous to those of the major Judeo-Christian religious traditions. Thus, within Western scholarship, there have been no systematic attempts to delineate central doxastic elements within the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition by suggesting correlations with distinctive Christian concepts, and this scholarly lacuna within Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism restricts comparative theological dialogue between Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism and Christianity. In order to address this lacuna, (...)
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  39. The Bright Lights on Self Identity and Positive Reciprocity: Spinoza’s Ethics of the Other Focusing on Competency, Sustainability and the Divine Love.Ignace Haaz - 2018 - Journal of Dharma 43 (3):261-284.
    The claim of this paper is to present Spinoza’s view on self-esteem and positive reciprocity, which replaces the human being in a monistic psycho-dynamical affective framework, instead of a dualistic pedestal above nature. Without naturalising the human being in an eliminative materialistic view as many recent neuro-scientific conceptions of the mind do, Spinoza finds an important entry point in a panpsychist and holistic perspective, presenting the complexity of the human being, which is not reducible to the psycho-physiological conditions of life. (...)
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  40. (1 other version)Prefacing the Theodicy.Christia Mercer - 2014 - In Larry M. Jorgensen & Samuel Newlands (eds.), New Essays on Leibniz’s Theodicy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 13-42.
    The Preface to Leibniz's famous Theodicy offers a perspective on the work that has been insufficiently studied. In this paper, I ask that we step back from the main text of the Theodicy and attend to its Preface. I show that the latter performs two crucial preparatory tasks that have not been properly appreciated. The first is to offer a public declaration of what I call Leibniz’s radical rationalism. The Preface assumes that any attentive rational being is capable of (...) knowledge. The basic idea is that it is knowledge about a divine perfection that can be understood more or less completely. In the Preface, Leibniz entices his readers to seek such knowledge and explains why doing so has been so difficult before now. What makes this rationalism radical is that divine knowledge is severed from any religion or set of religious beliefs. While some Christian doctrines make it easier to approach God, they are neither necessary nor sufficient to do so. The author of the Theodicy thereby informs his readers that they have access to divine perfections, regardless of religious affiliation. To acquire such knowledge, they need only work through his book. The second task of the Preface is closely related to the first. It invites readers to seek divine love and virtue. To set themselves on the path to virtue, they need only avoid the pitfalls of religion and use reason in the right way to grasp a divine perfection. Once they enter the main text of the Theodicy, they have begun that journey. (shrink)
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  41. Mark C. Murphy, God’s Own Ethics: Norms of Divine Agency and the Argument from Evil. [REVIEW]Nevin Climenhaga - 2020 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 17 (5):587-590.
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  42. Hugh J. McCann (ed.), Free will and Classical Theism: The Significance of Freedom in Perfect Being Theology[REVIEW]Garrett Pendergraft - 2017 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 16.
    This volume collects a set of papers that were presented at a conference on “Big Questions in Free Will,” held at the University of Saint Thomas in October of 2014. It is dedicated to its editor, who passed away shortly after completing the manuscript. I will briefly summarize each of the 11 chapters and then offer a few critical comments.
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  43. Die radikale Unbegreiflichkeit von Gott für den menschlichen Verstand.Markus Kohl - forthcoming - In Heiner F. Klemme & Bernd Dörflinger (eds.), Die Gottesidee in Kants theoretischer und praktischer Philosophie (Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophie).
    I examine the extent to which God is inscrutable to human reason in Kant's critical philosophy. I argue that Kant's view here is much more radical than the rationalist commonplace that we cannot grasp how divine perfection is compatible with the existence of (apparent) imperfections. In Kant's considered view, we are absolutely incapable of accurately representing God's nature in any minimally determinate way: when we try to go beyond the empty idea of a mere 'something', we inevitably distort the (...)
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  44. The Imperfect God.Ron Margolin - 2020 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12 (2):65-87.
    This paper focuses on the Hasidic view, namely, that human flaws do not function as a barrier between a fallen humanity and a perfect deity, since the whole of creation stems from a divine act of self-contraction. Thus, we need not be discouraged by our own shortcomings, nor by those of our loved ones. Rather, seeing our flaws in the face of another should remind us that imperfection is an aspect of the God who created us. Such a positive (...)
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  45. Fundamentos filosóficos sobre Dios en el pensamiento de Santo Tomás de Aquino.Manuel Ocampo Ponce - 2017 - Studium : revista de filosofía y teología 57 (FASC 2.):221-244.
    Resumen: Frente a la situación de ateísmo teórico y práctico que prevalece en este contexto, el presente trabajo es una síntesis de los fundamentos filosóficos sobre Dios que constituye el tema más importante de la Filosofía. Se trata de un esfuerzo por presentar de manera sintética y clara lo que se refiere al Ser, la Existencia, la Esencia y las Perfecciones divinas, y sobre el hecho de que todo ser, toda permanencia en el ser y todo acrecentamiento de las creaturas (...)
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  46. Sobre a teologia do ser perfeito nas tradições não-abraâmicas: o Vedanta como estudo de caso.Ricardo Silvestre - 2014 - Cultura Oriental 1 (1):41-48.
    This paper aims at examining the issue of the role of supreme being theology in non-Abrahamic traditions. According to the dominant view in contemporary philosophy of religion, the philo-sophical project of inferring divine properties from the concept of God as a maximally perfect being, usually called supreme being theology, is an exclusivity of the Abrahamic traditions. In attempting to question this view, I investigate the developments of two key-concepts of Vedāntatradition –the concepts of Brahman (literally, the greatest) and Bhagavān (...)
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  47. The Hidden Love of God and the Imaging Defense.Sameer Yadav - 2019 - In James M. Arcadi, Oliver D. Crisp & Jordan Wessling (eds.), Love, Divine and Human: Contemporary Essays in Systematic and Philosophical Theology. T&T Clark.
    J. L. Schellenberg has recently argued that there is a logical incompatibility between God’s being perfectly loving and there being non-resistant nonbelievers in the proposition that God exists. In this paper I highlight the parallel between this claim and the claim made by the logical problem of evil. Following Plantinga’s strategy in undermining the logical problem of evil, I argue that all that is needed to undermine the alleged incompatibility of divine love with non-resistant non-belief is a counterexample showing (...)
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  48. On the Contingent Necessity of the World.Mike Almeida - 2023 - In Joshua Lee Harris, Kirk Lougheed & Neal DeRoo (eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on Existential Gratitude. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 109-122.
    I consider the most serious problem for the traditional account of divine creation in theistic actualism. According to van Inwagen's modal collapse argument, ultimate explanation entails that gratitude to God for one's existence is totally inappropriate. Ultimately, the actual world, and everything in it, is self-explanatory, and not a consequence of divine creation. I argue that van Inwagen's argument is unsound. It is consistent with an ultimate explanation for the world that the actual world is contingently necessary. If (...)
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  49. Towards a Buddhist Theism.Davide Andrea Zappulli - 2023 - Religious Studies 59 (4):762-774.
    My claim in this article is that the thesis that Buddhism has no God, insofar as it is taken to apply to Buddhism universally, is false. I defend this claim by interpreting a central text in East-Asian Buddhism – The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna – through the lenses of perfect being theology (PBT), a research programme in philosophy of religion that attempts to provide a description of God through a two-step process: (1) defining God in terms of maximal greatness; (...)
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  50. Is God Hidden, Or Does God Simply Not Exist?Ian M. Church - 2017 - In Mark Harris & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), Philosophy, Science and Religion for Everyone. New York: Routledge. pp. 62-70.
    In this chapter: I distinguish the existential problem of divine hiddenness from the evidential problem of divine hiddenness. The former being primarily concerned with the apparent hiddenness of a personal God in the lives of believers amidst terrible suffering. The latter being primarily concerned with the apparent hiddenness of God being evidence against God’s existence. In the first section, I highlight the basic contours of the evidential problem of divine hiddenness, and suggested that the argument rests on (...)
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