(Originally written December 29, 2006 in Book 7)
Philosophy of Religion 3rd Edition
John H. Hick
Prentice-Hall Inc.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ
1983
Little Bobby's Birth Date
It's about 6:30 AM and Kathi ought to be being prepped. It won't be long until there will be a new member added to the Thornton family. Luckily, this one will add some testosterone. Maybe it'll balance this house out.
(Philosophy of Religion continued)
Infinite, Self-Existent
Monotheistic faith finds its primary expressions in the commands, prayers, Psalms, prophecies, parables and teachings of the Bible.
The basis of Christianity has been philosophically elaborated throughout the history of Christian thought.
Christianity is more theological articulated than Judaism.
God is infinite or unlimited.
Paul Tillich stated that we ought not to state that God exists because existence is a limitation. The question of God's existence can neither be asked or answered. He held that God is being-itself, not a being.
Tillich maintains that God has a reality that is not the first or the highest, but a completely separate one that gives birth to all other reality.
The Medieval theologians (echoed by Tillich) stated that the creator and the created cannot be stated to exist in the same sense.
The Christian God is and has unlimited being and the divine attributes are ways in which the divine reality has being.
The 1st attribute is self-existence (aseity).
The concept of self-existence has two elements:
1) God has complete and absolute ontological independence
2) God is without beginning or end
Anselm pointed out that God's divine eternity is more than existence without beginning or end. "Indeed you exist neither yesterday nor tomorrow but are absolutely outside all time" (Hick, 8).
Creator
God is the creator of all things. He created everything ex nihilo.
The notion of creation ex nihilo contains two important corollary ideas:
1) The creation can never become the creator.
2) The created realm is absolutely dependent upon God
Aquinas held that the idea of creation does not necessarily rule out the possibility that the created universe may be eternal. But that the Biblical revelation rules out an eternal universe.
Augustine asserts that creation did not take place in time, but time was likewise a creation of God. If Augustine is correct then the relativity theory, which holds that space-time is internally infinite, is correct.
The Creation story is not regarded as a scientific description by "responsible religious thinkers". "It is seen rather as the classical mythological expression of faith that the whole natural order is a divine creation" (Hick, 10).
Origen saw the creation account as figurative.
Personal
God as a personal deity is deeply rooted in Jewish and Christian tradition. God is not an it. He is a divine thou.
Loving, Good
God's goodness, love and grace are virtually synonymous in the New Testament.
Love of God must be understood, but first the notion of the Greek eros and agape (types of love) must be understood.
Eros - desiring love, love evoked by the desirable qualities of the beloved. This love depends on the lovableness of its objects.
God's love for man in the New Testament is agape love.
Agape love is unconditional. It is not dependent upon the lovableness of the objects.
The ultimate of grace is the ultimate of power.
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