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76 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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The second order discipline pursued by philosophers concerned with philosophizing about problems raised by religious truth claims.
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Philosophy of Religion
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The truth of Scripture
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Systematic theology
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The branch of theology that seeks to prove God's existence apart from the resources of authoritative divine revelation.
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Natural theology
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A family of arguments that seek to demonstrate the existence of a Sufficient Reason or First Cause of the existence of the cosmos.
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Cosmological argument
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It aims to show that the universe had a beginning at some moment in the finite past and, since something cannot come out of nothing, must therefore have a transcendent cause, which brought the universe into being.
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Kalam cosmological argument
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1) The controlling paradigm of cosmology.
2) Argues the space-time universe originated ex nihilo about 15 billion years ago. |
Standard big bang model
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1) Named for Thomas Aquinas
2) Seeks a cause that is first, not in the temporal sense, but in the sense of rank. 3) Argues for the existence of God based on the eternity of the world |
Thomist cosmological argument
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An individual nature which serves to define what that things is.
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Essence
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A continual bestowal of being, or the thing would be annihilated
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Act of being
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1) Explained by Leibniz
2) No fact can be real or existent, no statement true, unless there be a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise. |
Principle of sufficient reason
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A simple fact that cannot be explained.
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Brute fact
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Somethings non existence is impossible.
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Metaphysically necessary
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1) Every existing thing has an explanation or its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
2) If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. 3) The universe is an existing thing. 4) Therefore the explanation of the existence of the universe is God. |
Leibnizian Cosmological argument
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Beings which exist of their own nature and so have no external cause of their existence
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Necessary beings
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Beings whose existence is accounted for by causal factors outside themselves.
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Contingent beings
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All moments of time are equally existent
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B-theory of time
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Temporal becoming is real
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A-theory of time
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The argument's defender means any collection having at a time "t" a number of definite and discrete members that is greater than any natural number.
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Actual infinite
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Any collection having at any time "t" a number of definite and discrete members that is equal to some natural number but which over time increases endlessly toward infinity as a limit.
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Potential infinite
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A mathematical system based on certain adopted axioms and conventions
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Set theory
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There were days infinitely distant in the past
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Tristram Shandy paradox
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The universe exists in a steady state, with a constant mean mass density and a constant curvature of space.
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General theory of relativity
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Expands and recontracts forever
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Oscillating universe
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Continually spawns new universes
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Inflationary universe
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An eternal vacuum out of which our universe is born
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Vacuum fluctuation universe
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Processes taking place in a closed system always tend toward a state of equilibrium.
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Second law of thermodynamics
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The actual values assumed by the constants and quantities in question are such that small deviations from those values would render the universe life-prohibiting.
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Fine-tuning
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An explanation that not only explains a certain situation but also reveals in doing so that there is something to be explained.
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Tidy explanation
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High improbability plus an independent pattern
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Specified complexity
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T.O.E.
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Theory of everything
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The physical universe must be 11-dimensional, but why the universe should possess just that number of dimensions is not addressed by the theroy.
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Super-string theory
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Any observed properties of the universe that may initially appear astonishingly improbable can be seen in their true perspective only after we have accounted for the fact that certain properties could not be observed by us, were they to be exemplified, because we can only observe those compatible with our own existence.
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Anthropic principle
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A world ensemble of concrete universe exists, actualizing a wide range of possibilities.
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Many worlds hypothesis
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Implies that despite the inequities of this life, in the end the scale of God's justice will be balanced.
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Moral accountability
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Objective moral values and duties do exist and are not dependent on evolution or human opinion, but they also insist that they are not grounded in God.
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Atheistic moral realism
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Arguing that a belief is mistaken or false because of the way that belief originated.
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Genetic fallacy
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Anselm's argument
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Ontological argument
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Entails such excellent-making properties as omniscience, omnipotence and moral perfection,
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Maximal excellence
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There is a possible world in which a maximally great being exists.
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Maximal greatness
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Roughly understood as actualizability
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Metaphysical possibility
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Imaginability
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Epistemic possibility
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The properties that make up maximal excellence have peak values.
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Intrinsic maxima
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Skeptics about the knowability of necessary and possible truths.
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Modal skeptics
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A case in which one's only reason for thinking a premise in an argument to be true is one's belief that the conclusion is true.
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Question-begging
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It seems unbelievable, if an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God exists, that he would permit so much pain and suffering in the world.
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Problem of evil
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How to give a rational explanation of the coexistence of God and evil.
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Intellectual problem of evil
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Concerns how to comfort those who are suffering and how to dissolve the emotional dislike people have of a God who would permit such evil.
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Emotional problem of evil
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Premises to which the Christian theist is or ought to be committed as a Christian, so that the Christian world view is somehow at odds with itself.
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Internal problem of evil
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Presented in terms of premises to which the Christian theist is not committed as a Christian but which we nonetheless have good reason to regard as true.
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External problem of evil
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The objector's goal is to show that it is logically impossible for both God and evil to exist.
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Logical version of the problem of evil
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Admits that it is possible that God and evil coexist, but it insists that it is highly improbable that both God and the evil in the world exist.
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Probabilistic version of the problem of evil
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Plantinga's argument that if it is even possible that creatures have libertarian freedom, then the two assumptions made by the objector are not necessarily true, which they must be if the atheist is to show that there is no possibility of the coexistence of God and evil.
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Free will defense
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Creation out of nothing
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creatio ex nihilo
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originating creation
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creatio originans
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continuing creation
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creatio continuans
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Doctrine according to which no persisting individuals exist, so that personal agency and identity over time are precluded.
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Occasionalism
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God's ordering of things to their ends, either directly or mediately through secondary agents.
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Providence
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God not only supplies and conserves the power of operation in every secondary cause, but that he acts on the secondary causes in order to produce their actual operations.
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Doctrine of pre-motion
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God acts, not on, but with the secondary cause to produce its effects.
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Simultaneous concurrence
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Able to function as signs of divine activity
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Miracles
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Ordinary providence
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providentia ordinaria
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Extraordinary providence
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providentia extraordinari
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The "laws" of nature are not really laws at all, but just generalized descriptions of the way things happen in the world.
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Regularity theory
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Natural laws are not merely descriptive, but tell us what can and cannot happen in the natural world.
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Nomic necessity theory
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Events that cannot be produced by the natural causes operative at a certain time and place.
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Naturally impossible events
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Things in the world have different natures or essences, which include their causal dispositions to affect other things in certain ways, and natural laws are metaphysically necessary truths about what causal dispositions are possessed by various natural kinds of things.
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Causal dispositions theory
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Reason
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Logos
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The Son and Spirit are not distinct individuals from the Father.
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Modalism
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The Son is not of the same substance with the Father, but was rather created by the Father before the beginning of the world.
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Arianism
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The Son is declared to be of the same essence as the Father.
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homoousios
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Lays greater emphasis on the diversity of the person
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Social trinitarianism
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Places greater stress on the unity of God
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Latin trinitarianism
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There is only one God, whose unicity of intellect and will is not compromised by the diversity of persons.
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Anti social trinitarianism
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Appeals to the harmonious, interrelated functioning of the divine persons as the basis for viewing them as one God.
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Functional monotheism
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Holds that the Trinity is a mind that is composed of the minds of the three persons in the Godhead.
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Group Mind Monotheism
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Holds that while the persons of the Trinity are divine, it is the Trinity as a whole that is properly God.
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Trinity Monotheism
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