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The logical placing of the name ‘God’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Extract

In recent years there has been a great deal written about religious language, but very often the reader is left guessing as to what answer the writer he has been considering would have given to the question, Is there a God? Does God exist? Is there some reality for which the word ‘God’ is the accepted name? This may seem to many an unsatisfactory state of affairs, for at least the plain man is impatient of what he deems to be undue sophistication, especially on ultimate questions of this kind; and he would much prefer, as he might put it, to get down to brass tacks. Consequently, the plain man would probably be very unhappy about the question which I have posed regarding the possible logical placing of the name ‘God’, and he would greatly prefer to see it put in straightforward fashion as the question, Does God exist or not?

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1971

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References

page 130 note 1 Flew, A. and MacIntyre, A. (eds.), New Essays in Philosophical Theology, pp. 96f.Google Scholar

page 132 note 1 Religious Language, p. 26.

page 132 note 2 Freedom and Immortality, p. 59f.

page 132 note 3 Religious Language, p. 47.

page 132 note 4 ibid., p. 59.

page 132 note 5 ibid., p. 66.

page 134 note 1 Playboy, August 1966, p. 138; cf. L. D. Kliever and J. H. Hayes, Radical Christianity, pp. 160ff.

page 134 note 2 ibid., p. 139.

page 135 note 1 op. cit., p. 247.

page 136 note 1 ibid., p. 254.

page 136 note 2 ibid., p. 266.

page 136 note 3 ibid., p. 243.

page 136 note 4 ibid., p. 244.

page 137 note 1 op. cit., p. 67.

page 137 note 2 Italics mine.

page 138 note 1 Models and Mystery, p. 67.

page 141 note 1 The Secular Meaning of the Gospel, pp. 85, 87.

page 141 note 2 cf. Flew, A. and MacIntyre, A., New Essays in Philosophical Theology, p. 100.Google Scholar

page 141 note 3 The Secular Meaning of the Gospel, p. 85f.

page 141 note 4 Faith and Reason, p. 6.

page 141 note 5 ibid., p. 124; but cf. his retraction of this point in Reason in Religion, p. 40, while still holding that ‘all are religious in the sense that they live by a faith…a presupposition that cannot be proved’.

page 142 note 1 cf. Galloway, A. D., Faith in a Changing Culture, where the idea of ultimacy is required to play a very heavy part indeed; cf. the present writer's review in Scottish Journal of Theology, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 104ff.Google Scholar

page 143 note 1 A similar criticism might be preferred against the philosophy and theology of process as currently expounded in the United States.

page 143 note 2 Justification and Reconciliation, pp. 218f.

page 145 note 1 Summa Contra Gentiles, I, c. 4; quoted by Gilson, E., The Elements of Christian Philosophy, p. 25.Google Scholar

page 145 note 2 Speculation and Revelation in the Age of Christian Philosophy, p. 34.

page 146 note 1 cf. Church Dogmatics, I.2, pp. 132ff.

page 146 note 2 Evangelical Theology, p. 87.