Attritbutes of God

?
View mindmap
  • Attritbutes of God
    • Omnipotence
      • Support
        • Needed for human salvation
          • Couldn't carry out his plans for the universe without it
        • Ontological argument- Descartes and Anselm
          • God cannot be lacking any quality and therefore must have complete omnipotence
          • Descartes conclused that God must therefore be able to do anything even the logically impossible
        • Aquinas
          • "he can do everything that is absolutely possible"
            • "everything that does no imply a contradiction is amoung those possibilities in respect of which God is called omnipotent"
              • God cannot do anything which involves a contradiction
      • Disagree
        • Problem of evil
          • God could stop evil if he wanted to
          • Allows us to maintain free will
        • Limited omnipotence
          • Peter Vardy
            • God isn't in control of the whole of history and cannot change events
            • Wrong to say that evything which happens is the result of God
            • God cerated the world so that his omnipotence would be necessarily limited
              • This is self impossed so you can still call him omnipotent because nothing other than himself is limiting his power
          • John Macquarrie
            • limitations are self imposed
            • Like Aquinas he says that we cannot fully understand Gods omnipotence becuase we only have small fallible minds
    • Omni- benevolence
      • Heaven
        • Leads to people leading more moral lives
        • Encourages selfishness?
        • Boethius- Predestination makes reward unfair
      • Miracles
      • Sent Jesus to save humans
      • Answers prays
      • Created the world
      • Challenges
        • Kills innocent people
          • Sodom
        • Miracles make God partisan and arbitary
        • Allows suffering in the world
          • Problems of evil raised if God is all loving
            • Inconsistent triad
      • Why?
        • Only a good God is worthy of worship
        • Aquinas- "the perfections of everything exist in God"
      • Not good in the same way as humans- can't anthropomorphize God
      • Questions raised
      • Hell
        • Symbolic? used to inspire us to follow the teachings of Jesus
        • Swinburne
          • God is like a parent who punishes
          • Free will must include the freedom to damn ourselves
        • John Hick
          • A good God is incompatible with the idea of hell
          • Universalist- all will be saved
    • Omniscience
      • If God has no body how can he know what things taste of feel like?
      • Middle knowledge
        • God knows all the possibilities of what could happen in various situations
      • Future?
        • "Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of the came to be true" Psalm 139:16
        • Know the choices we make but not actually make them for us
          • Compatible with the timeless view of God
        • Does this affect our freewill?
          • Calvinists- freewill isn't possible it is only apparent and doesn't actually exist
      • Boethius
        • God sees everything in a simultanious present
          • If God is eternal then he cannot be subject to time
      • Swinburne
        • God has knowledge of everything which is logically possible to have knowledge of
          • Can't have knowledge of the future as it hasn't happened yet
  • Bibile examples
    • Omnipotence
      • Support
        • Needed for human salvation
          • Couldn't carry out his plans for the universe without it
        • Ontological argument- Descartes and Anselm
          • God cannot be lacking any quality and therefore must have complete omnipotence
          • Descartes conclused that God must therefore be able to do anything even the logically impossible
        • Aquinas
          • "he can do everything that is absolutely possible"
            • "everything that does no imply a contradiction is amoung those possibilities in respect of which God is called omnipotent"
              • God cannot do anything which involves a contradiction
      • Disagree
        • Problem of evil
          • God could stop evil if he wanted to
          • Allows us to maintain free will
        • Limited omnipotence
          • Peter Vardy
            • God isn't in control of the whole of history and cannot change events
            • Wrong to say that evything which happens is the result of God
            • God cerated the world so that his omnipotence would be necessarily limited
              • This is self impossed so you can still call him omnipotent because nothing other than himself is limiting his power
          • John Macquarrie
            • limitations are self imposed
            • Like Aquinas he says that we cannot fully understand Gods omnipotence becuase we only have small fallible minds
    • "with God all things are possible" Matthew 19:23-26
    • "for nothing is impossible with God" Luke 1:36-37
    • Sarah and Hannah
      • Both past child bearing age but God graced them with a child

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar Philosophy resources:

See all Philosophy resources »See all Ideas of gods resources »