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    Aseity is not essential to divinity (i.e., not essential ... — Carmelics
    Home/Trinity
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Aseity is not essential to divinity (i.e., not essential for being worthy of worship).

    Trinity
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.The intuition that divinity requires aseity is not shared by those who drew up the Nicene creed.
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    • 2.The qualities of omnipotence, omniscience, eternality, perfect goodness, and necessary existence are sufficient to guarantee the worship-worthiness of the Persons.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The Nicene Creed's silence on aseity reflects a polemical context targeting Arianism, not a considered judgment that aseity is theologically dispensable.
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    • 2.Classical theists from Augustine through Aquinas explicitly grounded worship-worthiness in God's esse subsistens—pure self-subsistent being—making aseity constitutive, not incidental, to divinity.
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    • 3.A being receiving existence or perfections from an external source inherits a prior metaphysical debt, which structurally disqualifies it as a fitting terminus of ultimate religious devotion.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.A being whose existence or nature depends on another cannot be the ultimate ground of all value, and worship requires directing oneself toward the ultimate ground of all value.
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    • 2.Anselm's concept of God as that than which nothing greater can be conceived entails aseity, since a dependent being is conceivably surpassed by an independent one of equal attributes.
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    Trinity

    Related

    A being receiving existence or perfections from an external source inherits a pr...A being whose existence or nature depends on another cannot be the ultimate grou...Anselm's concept of God as that than which nothing greater can be conceived enta...Classical theists from Augustine through Aquinas explicitly grounded worship-wor...
    +3 moreShow less
    The Nicene Creed's silence on aseity reflects a polemical context targeting Aria...The intuition that divinity requires aseity is not shared by those who drew up t...The qualities of omnipotence, omniscience, eternality, perfect goodness, and nec...

    Similar

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    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: trinity
    Layman
    View source passageHide passage
    How can the Son and Spirit be fully divine if each is caused by the Father and so does not exist a se? Layman answers that “the objector’s intuition that divinity requires aseity is not shared by those who drew up the [Nicene] creed” (167). Further, “it seems to me that aseity is clearly not essential to divinity, that is, it is not essential for being worthy of worship” (168). The qualities of omnipotence, omniscience, eternality, perfect goodness, and necessary existence are sufficient to guarantee the worship-worthiness of the Persons (ibid.).
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The passage explicitly presents both premises as reasons Layman gives for concluding that aseity is not essential to divinity/worship-worthiness, and together they rationally support that conclusion—one by undermining the historical basis for requiring aseity, the other by providing an alternative sufficient set of divine attributes.

    Confidence: Clearly stated argument by Layman with explicit premises and conclusion.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit