4 - God and the world
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2009
Summary
Some claim that God is incorporeal, others that He is corporeal.
TertullianIn the first three chapters I argued against a materialist theory of persons. If successful, this removes an important obstacle to theistic belief. Jonathan Barnes points out that adopting a materialist account of persons and retaining a conventional understanding of the Divine, compels one to conclude that neither monotheism nor polytheism is true. “If Gods are persons, then Gods are corporeal. Allow this, and it is reasonable to assert as an empirical truth that no Gods exist.” In arguing against materialism, I advanced reasons for not dismissing theism on these grounds. If integrative dualism is plausible, there is reason to resist the skepticism of Nielsen, Edwards, Daher, Flew, MacPherson, Rorty, Miles, Kenny, and others who, like Barnes, link their reservations about the existence of God with their reservations about dualism. More needs to be said, however, about theological and ethical reasons for rejecting dualism and overturning an incorporeal view of God as a person or person-like reality. It may well be that while integrative dualism is philosophically defensible, it is religiously indefensible. Some theologians, convinced of the inadequacy of dualism, have articulated physicalist notions of both God and human persons.
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- Consciousness and the Mind of God , pp. 225 - 271Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994