# 101 Key Terms of Philosophy for Theology (Smith et al)



## RamistThomist (May 13, 2015)

Smith begins his section on aesthetics with a good discussion of Platonism’s rejection of art as a category of knowledge. That’s fine but then he projects that understanding forward to modern day Reformed, and then ties in the Reformed with 8th century iconoclasts. While some Reformed are gnostic platonists, the main reformed objection is not that beauty is bad and the divine can’t be imaged, but what has God said for his worship? Smith writes, “appeal is often made to the liturgy...where all of the senses are engaged in order to communicate the truth of grace” (1). Maybe so, but that is no safeguard. Any Baalist in ancient Israel could have made the same argument. “We aren’t worshipping the image, you silly Jew; we are worshipping God through the Golden Calf.”

Good section on apologetics. what is considered as “rational” is always conditioned by pre-rational beliefs and assumptions (7). Is this similar to Dooyeweerd’s “pre-theoretical thought?” They note elsewhere that “what goes under the name ‘reason’ depends on religious commitments” (28). 

Dualism/Monism: dualism is two kinds of things existing in the world. Monism one. 

Epistemology: the standard question was phrased around justified true belief: a person p knows x if and only if p believes x and p belief in x is justified and p is true. Plantinga has replaced and bettered this model with “a belief is warranted if it is produced by our cognitive faculties working in accord with their design (20). 

essence/essentialism: belief that objects have essences and that is their identity. An object’s essence is a collection of all the universal properties it possesses (20). 

Free-will: usually defined as “the ability to do otherwise” (30). Hard determinism holds that all of our actions are determined by genetics or sociality or the decrees of God. Soft Determinism holds all actions are determined but some of them are at least free. Augustine distinguished between freedom of choice and free will. A sinner can choose a number of things but because of the corruption of the will he cannot will the highest good (31). 

God, His Nature. Classical theism holds that God has the standard attributes found in systematics discussions (communicable and incommunicable). The incommunicable attributes are what is necessary for a most perfect being to exist. While there are tensions in how the classical model is often portrayed, one of its strengths, as critics of open theism point out, is if we deny the standard incommunicable attributes of God, precisely what is there unique about the divine nature that is left?

Heidegger, Martin. Human beings are the kind of beings who reflect on what it is to be. MH avoided calling the human being a subject and rather called it da-sein.

Hermeneutics. Fairly standard entry, but points out how recent developments have altered the discussion. Now the interpretation is being-in-the-world. Everything has a context.

Human nature. What makes us human? The options are usually functionalistic (define by what people do) or some form of essentialism. Both accounts are inadequate, as any good text on the imago dei will make clear. Recent discussions suggest that God’s Triune relationality is an analogy. Humans are not seen as static individuals but humans-in-a-relationship. This isn’t perfect, but it is a good way forward.

Hume and causality. Standard treatment of Hume. Good discussion on causality. We can only know when x occurs y occurs, but we cannot observe x’s causing y.

Idealism. Berkeley argued that our only evidence of the world is perception, but perceptions are mental, not physical. Thus, only the reality of ideas. 

Leibniz. Fine discussion. Each substance is isolated and pre-loaded by the Creator for self-sufficiency (that’s how he explains the problem of causality--when two substances “bump” into each other, the pre-loaded causal forces are actually doing the moving and not the other substance). Raised the charge of determinism and the rejoinder of best possible worlds. Principle of Sufficient reason: claim that every claim must have some sufficient reason why it, rather than its denial, is true. Used for the cosmological argument. 

Marx. alienation of labor. By selling the fruit of their labor for a wage, the laborer is unable to enjoy his labor nor the profit it produces. Further, as the increase of wealth becomes the possession of the bourgeoisie, the workers are seen as expendable.

Natural Theology. 

Necessity. A necessary state of affairs is one that holds in all possible conditions. Modal Logic concerns the state of possible worlds. 

Omniscience and Foreknowledge. While affirmed by classical theism, it does raise some interesting challenges and clarifications. If God is *out*side of time, can he know what happens *in* time? Time is changing; God is not. How can the two meet? The most famous response is Boethuis’. All things are eternally present for God. God sees everything at once and so doesn’t force an action. While a neat solution, this effectively guts any real definition of God and numerous biblical passages. It also seems to posit the realm of the “eternally appearing” now as independent of God’s creating act. 

Ontotheology. any metaphysical system that posits God as a solution to a problem (this has been sufficiently rebutted by Crisp and Rea. It's not that criticisms of ontotheology are wrong, but that "ontotheology" gets tagged onto anything that the critic doesn't like).

Rationality. Measures how one believes, not what. It is person- and situation-specific. We trust the beliefs produced by our cognitive faculties unless we have good reason to reject them. the problem with the evidentialist’s demand is that such evidence cannot be provided in a large number of cases with the cognitive faculties with which we have to work. If we were required to prove everything, there would be an infinite regress of provings. “We have been outfitted with cognitive faculties that produce beliefs we can reason from” (80). Thomas Reid, call your office.

the sensus divinitas is one such reasonable belief. a) most of our cognitive faculties produce beliefs immediately, without reasoning or evidence. b) belief in God is more like belief in a person than a scientific hypothesis. 

Substance. the stuff in which an individual thing’s properties or attributes inhere. However, it is difficult to distinguish between a substance of a thing and its properties. How does one identify the substantial “core” in an object? 

Theodicy. Rather than deal with logical problem-solving, thinkers like Brueggemann and Ricouer see it as “lament.”

Truth. Correspondence theories of truth face several challenges. 1) How do sentences (linguistic reality) correspond to facts (non-linguistic reality)? There are answers to this question, both by medieval philosophers (truth as adequatio) and modern analytic theists (truth-makers connect the linguistic with the non-linguistic answer). I wonder if James Smith wrote this entry and if so, would he address the huge problems coherentism faces?

Criticism: They seem to link Barth with the Social Trinitarians and the stressing of plurality of persons over unity of essence (89), but this is false. Barth is usually accused of being a modalist! In any sense, Barth preferred tropos hyparchos over “person” as a Trinitarian category. 

Uses humor: “There is no philosophy, once discredited, that has not found influence among theologians” (73).


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