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What does /his/ think of the Theistic Personalism vs. Classical Theism debate?
Just a quick summary:
>Classical Theism is the view held by most Abrahamic philosophers prior to the modern age
>When we say God is the creator we don't just mean he created the Earth and sat back, but rather God causes all things, ever and if he stopped existing reality would stop existing because he causes it
>Because God causes all things, and therefore originates all changes, he cannot be influenced and unchangeable: to claim he can be influenced would be to claim that lesser beings can CREATE change, but ONLY God can create
>God's traits are fundamentally different from man's traits: a man loves a woman in reaction to perceiving her and feeling warm in his heart, but God cannot react and he cannot feel things like a man because he doesn't have a body
>similarly, God's knowledge is different from man's knowledge: man knows by learning, and thus by reacting and being changed
>So God is 'simple': he doesn't have traits, he IS traits
>At the same time, God is unfathomable: To completely understand God would be like trying to put your arms around a mountain, one can understand individual traits and aspects to some degree (touching a mountain) but true understanding is impossible unless a miracle is involved
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>>1547766
Continued:
>Personalism is a view that evolved after the reformation and is becoming a predominant view in the US
>God is basically a person without a body, this is what is meant when we say God created us in his image
>Because God is a person, he feels: God feels sad when bad things happen and glad when good things happen
>Since God feels and acts in response to things, he reacts and answers prayers 'in time' as opposed to existing outside time
>this implies that God can undergo character development: since he reacts, he changes
>unlike classicists, personalists do not believe all history is God's doing, but rather that things exist because he permits them to exist
>because God is kind of a person, like man, he can be comprehended to a greater degree than classicists would admit
Personalists would argue that personalism is superior because the God of the Bible clearly acts, feels, and reacts. Classical Theists would say that even though personalism seems superficially like it agrees with the Bible, it is inconsistent with the traits we ascribe to God (omnipotence and omniscience, primarily.)
To me, Classical theism sounds like the patrician choice, and yet I feel like personalists have a point when they say their interpretation makes sense in a Biblical context.
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>Classical Theism is the view held by most Abrahamic philosophers
>Classical theism sounds like the patrician choice
Incompatible statements. Deism is actually the patrician choice BTW.
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>>1547766
>I feel like personalists have a point when they say their interpretation makes sense in a Biblical context.
The bible was written for plebs, for whom the more abstract god of classical theism was (rightly so, I believe) thought to be too difficult to understand, thus the anthropomorphism we find in the bible now.
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