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    God cannot be a member of any extant ontological category. — Carmelics
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Divine Attributes
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    God cannot be a member of any extant ontological category.

    Divine Attributes
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.If God is absolutely sovereign, then God must be the creative source of the ontological categories themselves, not merely the source of the natures of the members of categories.
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    • 2.Being the creative source of all ontological categories means God must transcend all categories.
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    • 3.Absolute sovereignty implies absolute transcendence and absolute ineffability.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Aquinas's doctrine of analogical predication allows God to instantiate categories like 'substance' or 'being' in an eminent, non-univocal mode without reduction to creaturely membership.
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    • 2.If analogical participation suffices for genuine ontological categorization, then transcendence of creaturely modes does not entail transcendence of categories themselves.
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    • 3.The supporting argument illicitly conflates being a member of a category in the creaturely sense with being categorizable at all, which Scotus identified as the equivocation underlying radical apophatic theology.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Duns Scotus argued that 'being' is univocally predicable of God and creatures, making God a member of the broadest ontological category without compromising divine infinity or aseity.
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    • 2.If univocity of being is coherent, then the inference from absolute sovereignty to absolute categorical transcendence fails, since creating the instances of a category does not require standing outside the category entirely.
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    • 3.Sovereignty over X does not logically entail non-membership in X, as Leibniz's creator God remains a substance while being the ground of all other substances.
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    Related

    Absolute sovereignty implies absolute transcendence and absolute ineffability.Aquinas's doctrine of analogical predication allows God to instantiate categorie...Being the creative source of all ontological categories means God must transcend...Duns Scotus argued that 'being' is univocally predicable of God and creatures, m...
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    If God is absolutely sovereign, then God must be the creative source of the onto...If analogical participation suffices for genuine ontological categorization, the...If univocity of being is coherent, then the inference from absolute sovereignty ...Sovereignty over X does not logically entail non-membership in X, as Leibniz's c...The supporting argument illicitly conflates being a member of a category in the ...

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    Being the creative source of all ontological categories means God must...77%If God is absolutely sovereign, then God must be the creative source o...75%God lacks metaphysical parts or ontological constituents.75%God cannot be the subject of metaphysics.74%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: divine-simplicity
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    Although McCann doesn’t say it, it seems to follow from his whole approach that God cannot be a member of any extant ontological category: he cannot be a universal or a set or a trope … or a concrete state of affairs. Indeed, if he is absolutely sovereign, then God must somehow be the creative source of the ontological categories themselves, how many they are and what they are, and not merely the source of the natures (essences) of the members of categories. God must transcend all categories. Taken to the limit, absolute sovereignty would seem to imply absolute transcendence— and absolute inef...

    Details

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