Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Can Models of God Compete?

  • Published:
Philosophia Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Though the very task of modeling God implies that the reality of God is to some degree unknowable, there are a variety of positions one may take concerning the degree to which one has epistemic access to God. If our models of God are too influenced by subjectivity, it makes no sense to test them against each other in rational competition. In this essay, I define four possible positions that may underlie the task of God-modeling: mysteriosophy, theopoetics, critical realism, and fallibilism. Of these four, I propose that fallibilism is the most appropriate method for constructing models of God. Fallibilism simultaneously assumes that our models are able to refer to a divine reality, and yet always with a tentative stance, as absolute confirmation or universal consensus concerning them will almost certainly never be obtained. Models of God can engage in rational competition, but a final decision will probably be delayed indefinitely. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 244.

  2. Ibid., 248.

  3. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum, 2000), 474.

  4. Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in Basic Writings (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 223.

  5. Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning and Language, tr. Robert Czerny, et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 247–256.

  6. Roland Faber, “Process Theology as Theopoetics” (paper presented at the Center for Process Studies Seminar on “Process Theology as Theopoetics,” Claremont, California, Feb. 7, 2006), copy supplied by Prof. Faber. The paper will be published in Faber’s forthcoming book, Toward a Theology of Multiplicity.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: The Free Press, 1925), 89.

  9. John B. Cobb, Jr. Transforming Christianity and the World (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1999), 105.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, California State University San Bernardino, 5500 University Parkway, San Bernardino, CA, 92407, USA

    Jeremy R. Hustwit

Authors
  1. Jeremy R. Hustwit
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeremy R. Hustwit.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Hustwit, J.R. Can Models of God Compete?. Philosophia 35, 433–439 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9059-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9059-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation