Divine impassibility : an essay in philosophical theology
Divine impassibility : an essay in philosophical theology
- 자료유형
- 단행본 서양서
- 최종처리일시
- 20080515000000
- ISBN
- 9781597522731
- ISBN
- 1597522732
- DDC
- 212.7-21
- 청구기호
- 212.7 C913d
- 저자명
- Creel, Richard E. , 1940-
- 서명/저자
- Divine impassibility : an essay in philosophical theology / Richard E. Creel
- 발행사항
- Eugene, Or : Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005
- 형태사항
- xi, 238 p ; 24 cm
- 주기사항
- Previously published by Cambridge University Press, 1986.
- 서지주기
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-233) and index.
- 일반주제명
- Suffering of God
- 책소개
-
In this volume, Richard Creel sets forth a thesis that offers a third way to approach divine impassibility. Defining impassibility as imperviousness to causal influence from external factors, Creel sketches a path between Aquinas and Hartshorne, by asserting that once this definition is accepted, one must still distinguish the various respects in which God is or is not impassible. Virtually no one would dispute that the divine nature is impassible. God will never cease to be God, no matter what happens in creation. With respect to the divine knowledge and will, however, there are conflicting views. Creel claims that Gods will is impassible because God knows everything that can be accomplished by divine power. Yet, unlike Aquinas, Creel believes that God has this knowledge in virtue of a plenum of possibilities eternally coexistent with the divine being. The absolute is not simply God, but rather God plus the plenum. Creel suggests that Gods knowledge is passible with respect to the contingent future actions of creatures. God knows these actions, therefore, not in their presentiality from all eternity, as Aquinas would hold, but only as they happen and become actual. Gods will, however, remains immediately impassible because the divine will is ordered to possibilities, not actualities. God never has to wait until after we do something in order to decide his response to it. He has eternally decided his response to all that we might do. Ultimately Gods feelings remain impassible, no matter what concrete decisions human beings make, because the basic intent of the divine plan for us is always achieved: we exercise our freedom to choose for or against God. God is impassible with respect to the divine nature, divine will, and divine feelings; but God is passible with respect to the divine knowledge of future contingent events.