Philosophy on the Knowledge of God
Uploaded by spootyhead on Apr 18, 2007
Philosophy on the Knowledge of God
Throughout history there has been a concept of a greater being(s) that guided our lives. In the beginning the main idea was that of plurality and polytheism. In ancient Greece and Rome, there were various gods that were believed to control different aspects of life. At some point, people began to worship only one god, the god of their own tribe. This religious position of henotheism eventually shifted to monotheism, for many. With monotheism comes the idea that your god is not only the god of your “tribe”, but of all humanity. And it is this position of that has undergone the most change and evolution throughout time. Yet, it remains with us today. As John Robinson explains, the most profound change within monotheism is that of the idea of God changing from “up there” to “out there.” This change has brought us to the most traditional concept that we have of God today. This is a concept in which we imagine God as a purely spiritual being, separate and independent from the world. He is supremely good, all-powerful, all-knowing, etc. (these attributes will be discussed later in the paper). Whether Robinson's ideas of the existence of God are right or wrong, we can say that it is undeniably true that there is an idea of God that most of us reference to. And, that is the idea of traditional theologians. It is for this reason that it is beneficial to elucidate our own thoughts about God and to investigate more thoroughly the concept of God that emerged from the thinking of past theologians.
The Attributes of God:
As a closer study of past theologians advances, we come to St. Anselm. Anselm, a good philosopher and great theologian developed a formula for what we can claim to be the attributes of God. He began this formula by stating that (1) God is a being than which none greater can be conceived and (2) God is the greatest conceivable being (Notice here that Anselm leaves room for a being greater than God. He urges us to not disprove the idea that there could be a being greater than can be conceived). With these two statements we can begin to formulate what Anselm meant by greater: power, goodness, knowledge? ...