Despite these images and many others, we know none of these are really pictures of God. Why? What is it about our idea of God, or our concept or conception of the nature of God/divinity that makes these 'not God'. This is much of the focus of Davies' reading for today.
The first step is to disentangle our notion of God as discussed in philosophy of religion with any theological views of God in a particular religious tradition, especially that of Jesus Christ as God and man. Why? Because when philosophers focus on the question(s) of God (who is God, what is God, God's role in the world) we have to do two things (1) bracket/temporarily put aside any specific revelations and (2) look at from a 'formal' and logical perspective what God can and cannot be.
From (1) and (2), both philosophers and theologians throughout history have identified certain attributes/properties we normally associate with God.
These include such properties as omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, infinite, impassible/unchangeable, eternal, an 'unmoved mover' and possibly several others. The question is, what do these all mean and when put together, what do they tell us about God (or what do they tell us God is not).
For instance, I think it is uncontroversial to say that when we reach for a box of cereal in the morning, we don't expect to see God hiding behind the box of Cap'n Crunch (at least in the normal way we use these terms). But why not? Why would we think someone was mistaken if they said they saw God hiding behind the box of cereal? Or why do we not worry that our space shuttles might hit God in the sky?
What does this intuition say about God?
Davies suggests there are two main contemporary understandings of the God of western monotheism (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) which both reflect our earlier ideas but place emphasis on different aspects of God:
Classical theism: “God is not a person....God is not an individual belonging to any kind.” (Davies, 8)
theistic personalism: “Generally, theistic personalists take God to be strikingly similar to what Descartes describes himself as being when explaining what he thinks he is" (Davies, 11) so the nature of God is understood as something like “person without a body”(Davies, 9).
Now, Davies makes quite clear that most people's conceptions of God fit somewhere between these two 'extremes', but they are helpful to get straight our own ideas on God.
It makes sense that if many of the main questions in the philosophy of religion depend on the existence of God and or God's role in our lives, the universe, the creation of the world, etc then one question we have to reach some level of clarity (as much as we can) is on the nature of God. What does this term/concept even mean and what possible reality does it point towards? This is the focus of Davies' chapter, and it relies heavily on what is called Natural Theology, which we will do quite a lot throughout the semester.
So, we can ask: What is Natural Theology? Is natural theology really theology or philosophy?
What other conceptions of God are available and might they be more accurate/better than the ones we have in front of us?
Which view, theistic personalism or classical theism do you think is closer to mainline Catholicism, Evangelic Christianity, Eastern Orthodox, other forms of Protestantism? Why?
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