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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
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    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Negative attributes of God should be interpreted as negations of similarity, i.e., expressions of incomparability

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Maimonides argued that negative attributes preserve divine simplicity by avoiding any predication, whereas incomparability claims still implicitly posit a relational property.
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    • 2.A statement of incomparability ('God is unlike creatures') presupposes a comparison class, thereby reintroducing the kind of conceptual relation to finite beings that negative theology seeks to eliminate.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Aquinas held that analogical predication allows genuine, if imperfect, positive knowledge of God's nature via the via eminentiae, making pure negation accounts informationally unnecessary.
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    • 2.If negations are merely expressions of incomparability, they collapse into a form of agnosticism that cannot ground the religious and liturgical practices that theological language is meant to support.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Pure negations do not convey anything positive about God
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    • 2.Interpreting negations as denials of similarity remedies their lack of informative content
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    • 3.This interpretation expresses God's incomparability to other things
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