The Coherence of Theism
Swinburne, Richard,
Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion,
University of Oxford
Print publication date: 1993
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-824070-9 doi:10.1093/0198240708.001.0001 |
|
|
Abstract:
Investigates whether the claim that there is a God can be spelt out in a coherent way. Part 1 analyses how we can show some claim to be coherent or incoherent. God is supposed to be a personal being, omnipresent, perfectly free and creator of the universe, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, a source of moral obligation, and eternal. Part 2 analyses how these divine properties can be understood in a coherent and mutually consistent way. Part 3 considers divine necessity and claims that God's existence necessarily must be understood as this being the ultimate brute fact on which all else depends, but his having the divine properties necessarily must be understood as his having these properties being logically necessary for his existence. The final chapter argues that, if a God of the kind analysed in earlier chapters exists, he is worthy of worship.
Keywords: analogy, Aquinas, Christianity, coherence, existence of God, God, necessity, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of religion, Richard Swinburne, theism, theology, worship Table of Contents
Preface
1.
Introduction
2.
Conditions for Coherence—I
3.
Conditions for Coherence—2
4.
The Words of Theology—I Words With Old and New Senses
5.
The Words of Theology—2 Medieval and Modern Accounts
6.
Attitude Theories
7.
An Omnipresent Spirit
8.
Free and Creator of the Universe
9.
Omnipotent
10.
Omniscient
11.
Perfectly Good and a Source of Moral Obligation
12.
Eternal and Immutable
13.
Kinds of Necessity
14.
A Necessary Being
15.
Holy and Worthy of Worship
Index
|
|
|
|
|