The Nature of God

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  • Created by: _alf24
  • Created on: 29-10-14 15:11
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  • The Nature of God
    • Simplicity of God
      • Augustine
        • God is unchangeable and so can't loose or gain characteristics.
        • To talk of God is to talk of a being that exists
      • Aquinas
        • God is immaterial. He has no body with characteristics. God is simply God
      • Davies
        • "God is not a thing like a human being but God is a thing in the same sense as you might talk about the human race as a whole"
      • Anselm
        • Existence is a predicate of God
    • Eternal
      • Aquinas
        • Time and change are inseparable, God cannot change so God cannot be in time.
      • Anselm
        • God is eternal because nothing can contain God
      • Boethius
        • All time is present to God simultaneously.
        • God is changeless and does not exist in time
      • Bible
        • Malachi 3:6
          • "For I the Lord do not change"
        • Psalm 102:27
          • "but you are the same and your years have no end"
    • Everlasting
      • Swinburne
        • The idea of all evens occouring simultaneously is incoherent
      • Bible
        • Psalm 100:5
          • "For the Lord is good and his love endures forever"
        • Revelation 1:8
          • "'I am the alpha and the omega' says the Lord 'who is and who was and who is to come, the almighty'"
    • Omnipotent God
      • Aquinas
        • God is an active power, shown by His activity in the world - miracles
        • Answers criticisms such as 'Can God climb a tree'
          • "If God is eternal and not physical, then God does not have a body to climb a tree"
      • Descartes
        • God can do anything including what might seem impossible.
      • Bible
        • Luke 1:37
          • "For with God nothing shall be impossible"
        • Matthew 19:26
          • "With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible"
      • Anselm
        • God cannot sin as this contradicts the nature of God that God is good
      • Kenny
        • "A being is omnipotent is it has every power which it is logically possible to possess"
    • Omniscient God
      • Aquinas
        • God has knowledge because knowledge is not physical
        • Analogy of a man walking down a road
      • Boethius
        • God "takes in all of history in a single glance"
        • God does not have forenowledge
      • Kenny
        • "Therefore while I type these very words Nero fiddles heartlessly on"
      • Sorabji
        • "If Gods infallible knowledge of our doing exists in advance, then we are too late so to act that God will give a different judgement"
      • Anscome
        • "There was no such thing as how someone would have spent their future if he had not died as a child"
  • The Bible quotes to support God being eternal aren't good enough

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