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Infinity in Theology and Mathematics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Jill Le Blanc
Jill Le Blanc
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L8S 4K1
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Extract

Can we apply the same concepts to both the finite and the infinite? Is there something distinctive about the infinite that prevents attribution to it of concepts that we can attribute to the finite? If so, then this could be a reason for our difficulties in talking about God – God is infinite, and our concepts, applying, as they do, to the finite objects of our experience, cannot be ‘extended’ to the infinite. God's infinity is sometimes used as an explanation of theological difficulties like the problem of evil or the paradoxes of omnipotence: we do not really know what we mean when we attribute infinite goodness or power to God.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 51 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Aristotle, , Physica, translated by Hardie, R. P. and Gaye, R. K., in The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by McKeon, Richard (N.Y.: Random House, 1941), 206a.Google Scholar

2 Bochner, Salomon, ‘Infinity’, in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, vol. II (N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973), p. 612.Google Scholar

3 Cantor, Georg, ‘Letter to Dedekind’, in From Frege to Godel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, ed. van Heijenoort, Jean (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 114.Google Scholar

4 Descartes, , Principles of Philosophy, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, 1, trans. Haldane, Elizabeth S. and Ross, G. R. T. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931), 1, xxvii.Google Scholar

5 Descartes, , letter to More, 5 02 1649, in Philosophical Letters, trans., ed. Anthony, Kenny (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), p. 242.Google Scholar

6 Descartes, , Principles of Philosophy, 1, xxvii.Google Scholar

7 Descartes, , Meditations, in Haldane and Ross, pp. 166f.Google Scholar

8 This explication of God's infinity is close to Aquinas's: cf. Summa Theologica 17.

9 Leibniz, , New Essays on Human Understanding, trans. Remnant, Peter and Bennett, Jonathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 157ff.Google Scholar

10 Bochner, ‘Infinity’, p. 614.

11 Aristotle, Physica, 206b–207a.

12 Griffin, James, Well-Being (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 85ff.Google Scholar

13 I am grateful to Hans Herzberger for his comments on earlier drafts of this material. I am also grateful to Edwin Mares for his suggestions.