The Power of God
Much contemporary analytic philosophy understands the power of God as belonging to the same logical space as the power of human beings: a power of efficient causation taken to the maximum limit. This anthropomorphic picture is often explicated in terms of God’s capacity to bring about any logically...
| Autor principal: | |
|---|---|
| Tipo de documento: | Electrónico Artículo |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
| Verificar disponibilidad: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Gargar...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publicado: |
Springer Netherlands
2010
|
| En: |
Sophia
Año: 2010, Volumen: 49, Número: 4, Páginas: 603-616 |
| Otras palabras clave: | B
Logical Possibility
B Swinburne B Omnipotence B Hasker B Phillips B Anthropomorphism |
| Acceso en línea: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Sumario: | Much contemporary analytic philosophy understands the power of God as belonging to the same logical space as the power of human beings: a power of efficient causation taken to the maximum limit. This anthropomorphic picture is often explicated in terms of God’s capacity to bring about any logically possible state of affairs, so-called omnipotence. D.Z. Phillips criticized this position in his last book, The Problem of Evil and the Problem of God. I defend Phillips’s argument against recent criticism by William Hasker, contending that the omnipotence thesis is either false or trivial. I trace the superficial plausibility of the thesis to a Cartesian understanding of personal agency, in the light of which God’s power over the whole material world is an inflated version of our more modest power over our own bodies: it is the power of immaterial souls to control material phenomena. This comparison is expressed to perfection in the work of Richard Swinburne, my main target. I argue that by making God a force among other possible forces, in-principle able to be resisted, however feebly, by contrary forces, this picture reduces the Creator to a creature. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1873-930X |
| Obras secundarias: | Enthalten in: Sophia
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s11841-010-0166-8 |