Clivedurdle

Todays print Guardian - I cannot find the digital version - has an article by a Dominic monk Gilbert Markus





My comments in other threads that the concepts of transcendence and supernatural are not in the Bible but later concepts seem to be correct....

pharoah

Your post does not corroborate your sensationalist thread title.

general_koffi

If God created everything that exists, then God Himself cannot exist...

Uh... How can something that does not exist do something? i.e. Make Everything that exists?

Malachi151

I love how "theologians" are comfortable making completely huge statements based on nothing other than their own reasoning.

It shows how absurd you get when you try to use logic from a false starting point.

Murmur

Oh, this is such old news. This goes back at least to Psuedo-Dionysius in the 5th century. You can find it in Aquinas as well, as the article states. Protestant theologian Paul Tillich brought this up all the time as well as many many other theologians. Its all old news. There was a book by some Anglican bishop, [forget first name] Robinson, who wrote a book called 'Honest to God' that was a big selling book in the 1950's that talks about all this stuff. I used to buy into this myself a few years ago (until I read Walter Kaufmann!).

The idea goes like this: Since God created existence, then 'existence' is not an attribute of God. To say 'God exists' is to put God on the level of beings rather than Being-Itself. God is not a thing among things, but the source of all things, therefore God neither exists, nor does God not-exist.

The problem is that this is really just a metaphysical slieght-of-hand. It is a meaningless statement, it has nothing in common with scripture or early Christian belief, nor has this ever been commonly believed & its simply a way of having your cake & eating it too. You can say 'God transcends existence, therefore he doesn't exist' & then turn around & say 'and that proves that he exists!' :banghead:

Then one day I read Walter Kaufmann's Critique of Religion & Philosophy & I was cured of all those mental gymnastics.

murmurmurmurmur

Chili

The problem here is that God created the essence of existence and not existence itself. It is only and all that found existence in life that became the manifestation of God and this makes God beyond or behind existence. So God is the inner core of all being after which beings are formed and will always be formed to have existence on earth.

Amaleq13

God is existence?

Regardless, this could not be more obviously a thread that belong in EoG.

Swoosh!

general_koffi

Then why bother worshipping it?

Agnostic Theist

That's easy

If God creates everything that exists then either God is not something that exists or God created Himself. But nothing can create itself (can it?) so it must be the case that God is not one of the things that exists.

Yep, it's the Barber paradox...

ETA - I came up with a notion similar to this, but with about 2 or 3 additional pages justifying and expouding the hypothesis. I'm hoping the uni permits me to discuss it publicly, so I can share and test the arguments.

Murmur

See, that's just too damn complicated. Like trying to nail jello to a wall. Why bother positing abstract concepts when you can simply LIVE without them? Even to the average Christian this is gobbledegook. Tertullian WAS right about one thing: 'What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?'

On PAPER it appears to make sense, but in real life it just doesn't apply to anything-- it doesn't connect, except in a theologian's ivory tower.

murmurmurmurmur