Part VIII: Philosophy of Religion

Chapter 23

Study questions for What are God’s Properties?

  1. Which of the traditional divine properties do you think is most problematic for the theist to render consistent when considered in isolation?
  2. Which two or more of the traditional divine properties do you think is most problematic for the theist to render consistent when considered together?
  3. How is omnipotence best defined?
  4. Is the theist best advised to conceive of God’s eternality as His being outside time or inside time but everlasting?
  5. In what sense(s) of ‘could’ should the theist and the atheist agree that at least there could be a God? In what sense(s) should they disagree that there could be a God?

Multiple Choice Questions

Weblinks for What are God’s properties?

Try out the activity available athttp://www.philosophersnet.com/games/god.php.It’s a good test of the consistency of your views about God. It raises the Euthyphro dilemma, something we’ve not had chance to think about in the chapter: is morality created by God?

The paper by Adams on Divine Necessity is available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026018.

Introductory further reading for What are God’s properties?

Leftow, B. (1997). ‘Eternity’. In Quinn and Taliaferro, eds, A Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Blackwell. [This addresses the issue of how best to unpack the notion of God’s eternity, i.e. his ‘eternality’, as I call it.]

Mawson, T. J. (2005). Belief in God, part 1. Oxford University Press. [This is an expanded version of the material of this chapter and addresses some issues surrounding the properties of God which theists do not think of as essential to Him yet which they all agree He has.]

Morris, T. (1991). Our Idea of God. Regent College. [A very good overview.]

Swinburne, R. (1993). The Coherence of Theism. Oxford University Press. [This is another engagement with the issues, but one that comes to some different (as well as some similar) conclusions about how best to understand the divine properties. Overall, Swinburne is optimistic, as am I, that the concept of God is consistent and indeed coherent.]

Wierenga, E. (1991). The Nature of God. Cornell. [Another very good overview.]

Zagzebski, L. (2007). Philosophy of Religion: A Historical Introduction. Blackwell. [‘Does what it says on the tin’, which is something slightly different from the ahistorical approaches taken in the first four titles on the list.]

Advanced further reading for What are God’s properties?

Adams, R. M. (1983). ‘Divine Necessity’. Journal of Philosophy 80: 741–51. [This is reproduced in Adams, R., The Virtue of Faith, Oxford University Press, 1987, and in Tom Morris, ed., The Concept of God, Oxford University Press. This last is a very good collection to have to hand when thinking about the topics of Chapter 1.]

Brower, J. (2008). ‘Making Sense of Divine Simplicity’. Faith and Philosophy 25: 3–30. [This is a more modern ‘take’ on it.]

Leftow, B. (1991). ‘Timelessness and Foreknowledge’. Philosophical Studies 63: 309–25. [This is a good treatment of the ‘problem of divine foreknowledge’ issue.]

Martin, M. and Monnier, R. (2004). The Impossibility of God. Prometheus Books. [This is an interesting collection of essays that share a more sceptical view about the coherence of theism.]

Morriston, W. (2001). ‘Omnipotence and Necessary Moral Perfection: Are They Compatible?’. Religious Studies 37: 143–60. [He says ‘No’. If you want to follow up the debate, there’s a reply by me and a reply-to-a-reply by him in later editions.]

Stump, E. (2003). Aquinas. Routledge, 2003, 92–130. [This talks about the doctrine of divine simplicity as it was articulated by its most famous proponent.]