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    On a Plantinga-style approach, God cannot be identical to... — Carmelics
    Home/Divine Attributes
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    On a Plantinga-style approach, God cannot be identical to his existence.

    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.God's existence is presumably a state of affairs, which is an abstract object.
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    • 2.God is a concretum.
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    • 3.No concretum can be identical with an abstractum on pain of violating the separateness of the concrete and abstract realms.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The abstract/concrete distinction is not metaphysically fundamental but rather a pragmatic classificatory scheme that can be revised under theoretical pressure.
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    • 2.Classical theists like Aquinas deny that God's existence is a state of affairs at all—divine esse is not a property instantiated by a subject but the very act of being itself.
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    • 3.If divine existence is not an abstractum but a sui generis act of being, Premise 3's prohibition on concrete-abstract identity does not apply to the God-existence identity claim.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Plantinga's argument presupposes that existence is always a property distinct from its possessor, but necessitarians like van Inwagen and Prior argue that for a necessary being, existence and essence may converge in ways that dissolve the subject-property gap.
      ?

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    • 2.If God exists necessarily and essentially, the modal profile of 'God' and the modal profile of 'God's existence' are identical across all possible worlds, undermining the ontological distinctness that Plantinga's argument requires.
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    Divine Attributes

    Related

    Classical theists like Aquinas deny that God's existence is a state of affairs a...God is a concretum.God's existence is presumably a state of affairs, which is an abstract object.If God exists necessarily and essentially, the modal profile of 'God' and the mo...
    +4 moreShow less
    If divine existence is not an abstractum but a sui generis act of being, Premise...No concretum can be identical with an abstractum on pain of violating the separa...Plantinga's argument presupposes that existence is always a property distinct fr...The abstract/concrete distinction is not metaphysically fundamental but rather a...

    Similar

    On a Plantinga-style approach, God cannot be identical with existence.93%God is identical to his existence.80%Essence and existence are identical, not distinct.75%God is therefore identical to his nature.75%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: divine-simplicity
    View source passageHide passage
    According to the classical theism of Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas and their adherents, God is radically unlike creatures and cannot be adequately understood in ways appropriate to them. God is simple in that God transcends every form of complexity and composition familiar to the discursive intellect. One consequence is that the simple God lacks parts. This lack is not a deficiency but a positive feature. God is ontologically superior to every partite entity, and his partlessness is an index thereof. Broadly construed, ‘part’ covers not only spatial and temporal parts (if any) but also metaphysic...

    Details

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