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References
John Hick,Evil and the God of Love (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 29.
Op. cit., pp. 29–30.
The focus of discussion has been whether the so-called ‘Paradox of the Stone’ renders the notion of omnipotence incoherent. Some contend there are solutions of the paradox. For example G. I. Mavrodes, “Some Puzzles Concerning Omnipotence”, and C. W. Savage “The Paradox of the Stone”, reprinted in B. A. Brody,Readings in the Philosophy of Religion (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974) pp. 340–2 and 345–9. Others have offered reformulations which, they claim, defy solution; for instance, J. L. Cowan, “The Paradox of Omnipotence Revisited”,Canadian Journal of Philosophy III. No. 3, (March 1974).
G.E.M. Anscombe and P.T. Geach,Three Philosophers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961), p. 115.
A.C.A. Rainer,New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London: S.C.M., 1963), p. 68.
John Hick, ‘Necessary Being’, reprinted in W. L. Rowe and W.J. Wainwright,Philosophy of Religion (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), p. 24. As Hick and Geach also point out, Aquinas does not reserve the term ‘necessary being’ solely for application to God. In his system, angles and human souls are also necessary beings, though they may be destroyed by God. For a fuller discussion, cf. Patterson, Brown, ‘St Thomas’ Doctrine of Necessary Being’,Philosophical Review LXXIII, No. 1 (January 1964). My discussion, however, will ignore the distinction between created and uncreated necessary being: when I talk of “necessary being’, I shall use it in the sense distinguished in the text as descriptive of the manner of God’s existence.
I do not wish to deny that this sense of “necessary being” is free from difficulties. See, for instance, criticisms made by Adel Daher “God and Factual Necessity”,Religious Studies, 6, No. 1, (March 1970) and D. R. Duff-Forbes, “Hick, Necessary Being, and the Cosmological Argument”,Canadian Journal of Philosophy, No. 4, (June 1972). However, I shall ignore such problems here since they are shared by traditional theists who make use of the term.
Hick ‘Necessary Being’ pp. 23–4.
E. S. Brightman,A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1940) pp. 318–9.
Quoted in Hick,Evil and the god of Love, p. 30.
Ninian Smart,World Religions: A Dialogue (London: Penguin, 1960) p. 114.
J.M.E. McTaggart,Some Dogmas of Religion (London: Arnold, 1906) p. 188. It should be noted that later, in the same chapter, McTaggart espouses the view that if God is omnipotent, he is absolutely omnipotent. However that does not affect his argument here.
C. Hartshorne and W. L. Reese,Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago: Phoenix, 1963) p. 8. I treat ‘self-existent being’ as equivalent to ‘necessary being’ in the sense defined.
Op. cit. p. 8.
Peter Bertocci, “The Person God Is’, in G. N. A. Vesey (ed.)Talk of God (London: MacMillan, 1969), pp. 200–1.
Hick,Evil and the God of Love, p. 331. The list includes C.C.J. Webb, C.S. Lewis, Dom Bruno Webb, Leonard Hodgson, Dom Illtyd Trethowan, and E.L. Mascall.
A Plantinga,God and Other Minds (Cornell U. P. 1967) p. 150, and The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 191–3.
Hick, op. cit.Evil and the God of Love, p. 332. For a fuller account of the meaning of the creation of the exnihilo in Hick’s book, cf. p. 62ff.
Hick, op. cit.,Evil and the God of Love, p. 29.
J. B. Baillie,The Interpretation of Religion (N.Y., Scribner’s, 1928), p. 430.
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Calvert, B. Dualism and the problem of evil. SOPH 22, 15–28 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02896899
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02896899