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Divine transcendence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Jonathan L. Kvanvig
Jonathan L. Kvanvig
Affiliation:
Texas A & M University
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Extract

Christians hold that God is transcendent, that He is other than all else that exists. For example, Paul Tillich claims,

The divine beings and the Supreme Being, God, are representations of that which is ultimately referred to in the religious act. They are representations, for the unconditioned transcendent surpasses every possible conception of a being, including even the conception of a Supreme Being … It is the religious function of atheism ever to remind us that the religious act has to do with the unconditioned transcendent, and that the representations of the Unconditioned are not objects concerning whose existence … a discussion would be possible.

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Articles
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Religious Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , September 1984 , pp. 377 - 387
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

page 377 note 1 Tillich, Paul, ‘The religious symbol’, in Hook, Sidney, ed., Religious Experience and Truth pp. 301–321 (New York: New York University Press, 1961), pp. 314–15.Google Scholar

page 377 note 2 Hick, John, ‘The new map of the universe of faiths’, in Shatz, and Cahn, , eds., Contemporary Philosophy of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 283.Google Scholar

page 378 note 1 For Aquinas' view on analogy. cf. Summa Theologiae la. 13; Summa Contra Gentiles I. 30–5.

page 382 note 1 For a more extensive account of this conception of essences cf. Plantinga's, AlvinThe Nature of Necessity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 384 note 1 For claims of this sort cf. Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theoloy, vol. I (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1953).Google Scholar