Classical Theism and the Nature of God | Edward Feser
The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute
4.8 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2019
⏱️ 83 minutes
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Summary
This talk was offered on January 16, 2019 at Oxford University. For more information about upcoming TI events, visit: thomisticinstitute.org/events-1/
Organized in partnership with the Aquinas Institute at Blackfriars Hall at the University of Oxford
Speaker Bio:
Prof. Edward Feser is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College and has also served as Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University. He received a PhD in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is the author of books including Philosophy of Mind (A Beginner's Guide), The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, Aquinas (A Beginner's Guide), Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, NeoScholastic Essays, Five Proofs for the Existence of God, and By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment. He blogs at edwardfeser.blogspot.com/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So I came from Los Angeles where we're having an unusually wet week, four or five days straight of rain, and I thought I would escape that by coming all the way to England, but alas, here we are today, raining in Oxford, but I appreciate all of you coming out despite that. Very kind of you. |
| 0:15.3 | So tonight I'm going to talk about some topics that I develop at length in my recent book, Five Proofs of the Existence of God, |
| 0:24.7 | where, as you can guess from the title of that book, the book is primarily devoted to arguments for God's existence, |
| 0:29.7 | but there's also a very long chapter in it where I deal with the nature of God, |
| 0:33.4 | which I think is a topic you have to deal with adequately to carry out the task of proving God's existence. |
| 0:38.9 | So is that part of the book or the topics dealt with in that part of the book that I'm going to talk about tonight for the most part is the nature of God? |
| 0:47.1 | So let me get into my talk then. |
| 0:49.0 | I trust everybody has now the handout to guide us. |
| 0:52.6 | I think they've got enough copies now. |
| 0:56.3 | If you don't, I may you raise your hand, something could give you one. So my topic this evening is the nature of God that is |
| 1:01.2 | understood within the classical theist tradition. And I'll also say something about how that |
| 1:06.5 | understanding differs from what Brian Davis calls the theistic personalist conception of God, which |
| 1:12.1 | Norman Geisler has also aptly labeled the neo-theist conception of God. Classical |
| 1:17.9 | theism is represented by such thinkers as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. Theistic personalism |
| 1:23.6 | or neotheism is represented by prominent contemporary philosophers of religion, like Alvin |
| 1:28.7 | Planniga and Richard Swinburne. To a first approximation, the difference between the views is this. |
| 1:35.4 | For the theistic personalist, the way to start working out the nature of God is to begin with the idea |
| 1:39.8 | that God is a kind of person, like us, but without our limitations. |
| 1:47.6 | The classical theist, by contrast, holds that the way to start is instead by thinking of God as the ultimate reality, |
| 1:51.1 | and in particular the ultimate explanation of why anything exists at all. |
| 1:55.3 | These different starting points lead the two views to very different end results. |
| 2:00.1 | To be sure, both views do affirm some of the same divine attributes, |
... |
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