3.God as creative Responsive Love

3.God as creative Responsive Love

?The existence of God

     process theology operates on the one side from the perspective of Christian faith and on the other in the metaphysical context provided by process philosophy and its doctrine of God. In a day when so many regard belief in God’s existence as wholly irrational or view the notion of God as nonsensical, a brief comment on this question is in order.

     In religion the gods are objects of devotion. Their ontological status is not directly in question. The question of existence arises only when the idea of god becomes conceptually more sophisticated, when religion moves toward philosophy. If that to which devotion is directed is thought to be an inclusive or unifying power, it becomes possible to doubt the existence of God, for there may be no such unifying power. //또한 우리가 다 이해할 수 있어야 된다고 주장은 적당하지 않다.  Inclusive or unifying power아닌 하나님을 왜 믿어야하나?

     Thus, philosophical doctrines of God vary with he views of reality expressed in the system. → one cannot believe in the God of one philosopher if one accepts the conflicting understanding of reality of another philosopher.

    

     Thomism : 중세의 스콜라 철학자인 토마스 아퀴나스의 사상을 신봉하는 철학과 신학 체계. 가톨릭교회의 공인 철학으로 지성의 우위를 주장하며 관념론과 유물론에 반대하였다.

     God of Hegel: emerging highest reality out of ourselves, the world, and nature, achieved through the self -determination of everything that’s capable of any kind or degree of self-determination.

    

     If the word God is tightly bound to any particular mode of devotion or view of reality, then in the course of events it will become clear that God does not exist.

     The fact that all conceptualities about God prove inadequate does not show that Jewish, Christian, and Islamic devotion is wholly misplaced or that ontological gradations of primacy are philosophically meaningless.

     He envisions a vast congeries of events coming into being momentarily and then lapsing into the past. Each new event must take account of the many events that make up the world give for it. It must do so in some definite way, for without definiteness there is no actuality. → since it has a past different from that of any event in its world, it must have a new form of definiteness. → the past cannot impose such a form upon it, since the present can derive from the past only what the past contains. This form of definiteness can be derived only from the sphere of possibility. But the sphere of possibility is purely abstract, lacking all agency to provide selectively for the need of new events. → there must be an agency that mediates between these abstract form or pure possibilities and the actual world. This agency is best conceived as an envisagement of the abstract forms of definiteness such as to establish their graded relevance to every new situation in the actual world. → in sum, God is that factor in the universe which establishes what is not as relevant to what is, and lure the world toward new forms of realization.

     Theistic aspect: chief weakness of traditional arguments for God has lain in the inadequacy of the idea of God they intended to prove. The ontological argument in particular can be cogently formulated, he believes but unless the idea of God it seeks to prove is coherent, it serves to disprove rather than to prove it.

     As a convincing notion of deity emerges that illumines human experience and coheres with our understanding of the world, the demand for an isolated and abstract proof diminishes. A theistic vision of all reality can gain adherence best by displaying its superior adequacy to other visions.