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How Not To Undermine Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Robin Attfield
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The doctrine of creation is theologically central. If God is not our Creator, we humans are not his creatures, much less made in his image: and still less can we fall short of the divine glory or be recreated in accordance with it. It is therefore vital for theists, and for those theologians who are committed to any of these doctrines, not to commit themselves to positions which entail or presuppose the denial of the creation doctrine.

So far, I should imagine, Brian Davies, O.P. who recently contributed to New Blackfriars a review of my recent book God and the Secular, would agree. The review was a generous one, which endorsed the need for natural theology, and indeed for maintaining the doctrine of creation. But Davies also contended that my own claim that God is an individual, and as such a member of a class, makes this doctrine collapse, and thus effectively undermines theology. My present purpose is to explain how, far from undermining theology, belief in God’s individuality and membership of a class is indispensable for upholders of the creation doctrine. At the same time I shall take the opportunity to expound the state of a discussion about these matters in philosophical books and journals which may have escaped attention.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 61 , Issue 721 , June 1980 , pp. 286 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Brian Davies O.P. Review of God and the Secular by Robin Attfield, Cardiff: University College Cardiff Press, 1978, pp 231 £9.50 at p 234 of New Blackfriars, Vol 60 No 709, May 1979.

2 Michael Durrant, ‘God and Analogy’, Sophia, Vol VIII No 3, October 1969, pp 11-24

3 Frederick Ferre, Language, Logic and God, London. Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1962.

4 I. M. Crombie, ‘The Possibility of Theological Statements’, in Basil Mitchell (ed), Faith and Logic, London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd 1957; also in Basil Mitchell (ed), The Philosophy of Religion, London, Oxford University Press 1971.

5 Michael Durrant The Logical Status of ‘God’, London, Macmillan and New York, St Martin’s Press, 1973; and Theology and Intelligibility, London and Boston, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.

6 The Logical Status of ‘God’, pp 109 f.

7 Robin Attfield, ‘The Individuality of God’, Sophia, Vol X No 1, April 1971, pp 20-27.

8 Robin Attfield, ‘The Lord is God: There is No Other’, Religious Studies, 13, pp 73-84.

9 God and The Secular, pp 164-66.

10 Humphrey Palmer, Analogy, London, Macmillan and New York, St Martin’s Press, 1973 p 34.

11 Thus E. L. Mascall, Existence and Analogy, London, Longmans, Green & Co 1949, pp 110-15. Mascall cites a parallel point from Fr Garrigou-Lagrange, Dieu, son Existence et sa Nature, Paris, Mm. Beauchesne et ses fils, 1919, pp 513-27; similar points are found in H. P. Owen, The Christian Knowledge of God, London. The Athlone Press, 1969, pp 214f.

12 The case which is here presented is developed further in my paper ‘Religious Symbols and the Voyage of Analogy’, forthcoming in David Miall (ed.) Metaphor: Problems and Perspectives, Hassocks, Sussex, Harvester Press, 1981.

13 See the paper mentioned in No 12.