Attributes of God Flashcards
Boethius’ ‘Simultaneous present’
God is not within out timeline so the future is unknown to us but not to him - he is within a ‘simultaneous present’ in which the past, present and future occur all at once.
Seeing us from a ‘lofty peak’
Anselm
Time is the fourth dimension as it is relative to us. Time is within God meaning that he can be close to humans without the constraints of time.
Swinburne on omnipotence
‘Everything’ needs to be understood properly. God can create and do ‘things’ but illogical occurrences aren’t ‘things’ (they don’t exist) hence why God hasn’t done them.
Swinburne on time
God is everlasting and temporal - meaning he is aware of our actions as they occur. This fixes the issue of free will and the idea that prayers can be answered.
Aquinas’ support of Boethius
Analogy that God is on top of a tall building watching everything happen at once.
Schleiermacher quote
“In the same way we estimate the intimacy between 2 persons”
Descartes on omnipotence
God can do anything, even the logically impossible. He created laws and therefore has the power to change them - otherwise his greatness would be limited.
Vardy quote
“This limitation does not, however, lessen God”
Vardy on omnipotence
His omnipotence is even more limited than what we think - nothing limits his power except when he chooses to.
Macquerie on omnipotence
God’s power is very different from our own - the word ‘power’ refers to the power in our world, not the greatness of God.
Stump and Kretzmann
God could change the past in his eternal present, but this wouldn’t effect us as temproral beings, as it is already in the past.
Kenny’s criticism of Boethius
The idea of a simultaneous present is ‘radically incoherent’ as it suggests that God doesn’t know there is a relation and sequence between events in time.
JL Mackie criticism of Descartes
The idea of logically impossible actions were ‘only a form of words which fails to describe any state of affairs’ so logical impossibilities simply do not exist.
Aquinas on God’s omnipotence
He has the power to do whatever is logically possible for him to do.
Einsteins box universe theory
The universe is a block of all the things that happen at any time/place. So the past, present and future al exist and are real. Not accepted by all scientists as it suggests that our future is predestined/can’t be changed.
Anselm = this is within God
