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Letter from America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Brian Davies OP
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Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 84 , Issue 989-990 , July 2003 , pp. 371 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 For development and defence of this thesis see Geach, P.T., ‘On Worshipping the Right God’ in Geach, P.T., God and the Soul (London and New York, 1969)Google Scholar. Cf. also Geach, P.T., ‘The Meaning of God’ in Martin, Warner (ed.), Religion and Philosophy (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar.

2 I should stress that I am not implying that there is any easily identifiable entity properly called ‘American philosophy’. That there is not is well argued by, among others, Bruce, Kuklick in ‘Does American Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?’ in Marcus, G. Singer (ed.), American Philosophy (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Cf. Anscombe, G.E.M., ‘What Is It to Believe Someone?’ in Delaney, C.F. (ed.), Rationality and Religious Belief (Notre Dame and London, 1979)Google Scholar.

4 Cf. Ludwig, Wittgenstein, On Certainty, ed. Anscombe, G.E.M. and von Wright, G.H., trans. Denis, Paul and Anscombe, G.E.M. (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar, paras. 160-167. See also Norman, Malcolm, ‘The Groundlessness of Belief’ in Stuart, C. Brown (ed.), Reason and Religion (London, 1977)Google Scholar.

5 ‘A Debate on the Existence of God’, reprinted in John Hick (ed.), The Existence of God (London and New York, 1964).

6 Geach, P.T., Logic and Argument (Oxford, 1976)Google Scholar.

7 This is not to say that there is some property called ‘existence’ which needs to be explained, though some have thought that there is such a property. Cf. my ‘Does God Create Existence?’, International Philosophical Quarterly (June 1990). Also see C.J.F. Williams, Being, Identity and Truth (Oxford, 1992). For good accounts of Aquinas on esse see Stephen Theron, ‘Esse’, The New Scholasticism LIII (1979) and Herbert, McCabe, ‘The Logic of Mysticism’ in Martin, Warner (ed.), Religion and Philosophy (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar.

8 Ludwig, Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. Ogden, C.K. (London, 1933)Google Scholar; ‘Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics’, The Philosophical Review LXXIV (1965).

9 Tractatus 6.44.

10 Tractatus 6.52.

11 Cf. Cyril, Barrett, Wittgenstein on Ethics and Religious Belief (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar; ‘The Logic of Mysticism’, in Martin Warner (ed.), Religion and Philosophy (Cambridge, 1992).

12 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Introduction to Ia,3.

13 Cf. Victor White, God the Unknown (London, 1956), pp.18 f.

14 De Potentia III,7.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Cf.: David, Burrell, Aquinas, God and Action (London and Henley, 1979)Google Scholar; David, Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God (Notre Dame, Ind., 1986)Google Scholar; Michael, J. Dodds O.P., The Unchanging God of Love: A Study of the Teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas on Divine Immutability in View of Certain Contemporary Criticism of this Doctrine (Fribourg, 1986)Google Scholar; Germain, Grisez, Beyond the New Theism (Notre Dame, Ind., and London, 1975)Google Scholar; Mark, Jordan, Ordering Wisdom (Notre Dame, Ind., 1986)Google Scholar; Brian, Leftow, Time and Eternity (Ithaca, 1991)Google Scholar; Norman, Malcolm, ‘The Groundlessness of Belief’ in Stuart, C. Brown (ed.), Rationality and Religious Belief (Notre Dame, Ind., and London, 1979)Google Scholar; Ralph, McInerny, Being and Predication (Washington D.C., 1986)Google Scholar; James, Ross, Portraying Analogy (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar; ‘Creation II’, in Alfred, J. Freddoso (ed.), The Existence and Nature of God (Notre Dame, Ind., and London, 1983)Google Scholar.

18 Cf.: Cyril, Barrett, ‘The Logic of Mysticism’, in Martin, Warner (ed.), Religion and Philosophy (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar; David, Braine The Reality of Time and the Existence of God (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; Ian, Crombie, ‘Eternity and Omnitemporality’ in William, J. Abraham and Steven, W. Holtzer (ed.), The Rationality of Religious Belief (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar; Geach, P.T., Providence and Evil (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar; Herbert, McCabe, God Matters (London, 1987)Google Scholar; Gareth, Moore, Believing in God (Edinburgh, 1989)Google Scholar; Phillips, D.Z., Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Faith after Foundationalism (London and New York, 1988).

19 Cf. John, E. Smith, The Spirit of American Philosophy (Revised Edition, Albany, N.Y., 1983), p.41Google Scholar.

20 A Pluralistic Universe (New York, 1909), p.309 f.

21 Cf. Andrew J. Reck, Recent American Philosophy (New York, 1962), p.331.

22 Steven, T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God (London, 1983), pp.4fGoogle Scholar.

23 Richard, Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge, 1989), p.21Google Scholar.

24 Alvin, Plantinga, Does God Have A Nature? (Milwaukee, 1980), p.47Google Scholar.

25 For what Aquinas is saying in those texts which seem to be Plantinga’s target, see my The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford, 1992).

26 London, 1970.

27 I discuss the formula ‘God is a person’ in An introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Revised Edition (Oxford, 1993), Chapter 8. Cf. also my ‘Classical Theism and the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity’, in Brian Davies (ed.), Language, Meaning and God (London, 1987).

28 Cf. Alvin, Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Ithaca N.Y., 1967)Google Scholar, Chapters 5 and 6; God, Freedom and Evil (New York, 1974), Part I; The Nature of Necessity (Oxford, 1974); ‘Advice to Christian Philosophers’, Faith and Philosophy 1 (1984).

29 William, Hasker, God, Time and Knowledge (Ithaca and London, 1989)Google Scholar, Chapter 10.

30 Hartshorne’s books are listed in Santiago Sia (ed.), Charles Hartshorne’s Concept of God (Dordrecht/Boston/London, 1990). Hartshorne is criticized in this book by Norris Clarke S.J. along lines I approve of. In this volume, too, he replies to Clarke.

31 Charles, Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (New York, 1983), pp.17 ffGoogle Scholar.

32 Nelson, Pike, God and Timelessness (London, 1970)Google Scholar.

33 Richard, Creel, Divine Impassibility (Cambridge, 1986), p.96Google Scholar.

34 Nicholas, Wolterstorff, ‘God Everlasting’ in Steven, M. Cahn and David, Shatz (ed.), Contemporary Philosophy of Religion (New York and Oxford, 1982), pp.95 fGoogle Scholar.

35 Ibid.

36 Matthew, Arnold, God and the Bible (New York, 1901), pp.34 fGoogle Scholar. Arnold's targets in Chapter 1 of God and the Bible bear a striking resemblance to some modern American philosophers of religion.

37 ‘The Unknown God’, in The Poems of William Watson, Volume 1 (London and New York, 1905), p.132.

38 For Malebranche, see Entretiens sur la métaphysique et sur la religion, trans. Willis Doney (New York, 1980), 7.10. Arabic occasionalists include Al Ash'ari (d. 936).

39 Edwards's occasionalism is neatly expounded in Hans, Oberdiek, 'Jonathan Edwards', in Marcus, G. Singer (ed.), American Philosophy (Cambridge, 1985)Google Scholar. For a more detailed account see John, E. Smith, Jonathan Edwards (Notre Dame, Ind., and London, 1993)Google Scholar.

40 See, for example, his sermon 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God'.

41 God Glorified in the Work of Redemption. I quote from Ola, Elizabeth Winslow (ed.), Jonathan Edwards: Basic Writings (New York, 1966), pp.118 fGoogle Scholar.

42 Freedom of the Will, quoted from Winslow, p.222.

43 God Glorified in the Work of Redemption, quoted from Winslow, p. 119.

44 Cf. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue (trans, Suzanne Noffke O.P., New York, 1980), p.56.