God in Recent Philosophy

Catalog description

The course examines three different conceptions of God: [1] Popular Theism: God conceived as similar to a human person - though incorporeal, unobservable, and possessed with superhuman attributes. This is the view of God held by most traditional theists. [2] Perfect Existence Theism: in which God is not a being of any kind, not even a personal being, even though personal language can be used in speaking of God. This is the view of God espoused by Thomas Aquinas; and [3] Panentheism: God conceived as inclusive of rather than independent of the world; the relation between God and the world being like the relation between the mind and its body. This view has been defended by Charles Hartshorne. In the case of each form of theism, questions arise as to how it deals with the problem of evil: how its view of God squares with the fact that the world contains vast amounts of moral and physical evil.