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Fluctuating maximal God

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

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Article

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Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pThis paper explores a variety of perfect being theism that combines Yujin Nagasawa’s maximal God thesis with the view that God is not atemporal. We argue that the original maximal God thesis still implicitly relies on a “static” view of divine perfections. Instead, following the recent re-evaluation of divine immutability by analytic philosophers, we propose that thinking of divine great-making properties (omnipotence, omniscience etc.) as fluctuating but nevertheless remaining maximal either for every time jats:italict</jats:italic> or across all times strengthens the original maximal God thesis. Furthermore, we show that “temporalising” Nagasawa’s maximal God and adopting what we call the fluctuating maximal God thesis provides more effective ways of responding to objections to perfect being theism, in particular, the argument from evil and some conceptual problems pertaining to the Incarnation. Finally, we demonstrate that our proposal is compatible with Christian Scriptures and coheres with numerous biblical passages better than Nagasawa’s original proposal does.</jats:p>

Description

Keywords

5003 Philosophy, 5004 Religious Studies, 50 Philosophy and Religious Studies

Journal Title

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0020-7047
1572-8684

Volume Title

88

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
AHRC (1928601)
AHRC (AH/L503897/1)