(December 14, 2024 at 1:53 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: I think most Christians reject the Prime Mover concept -- at least here in America. Most Christians seem to me to adopt the personal god. Of course, you're in Japan and not really in mainstream Christianity.
Thank you for making a very reasonable objection and not typing an insult to go with it.
I'm sure you're right that rank-and-file Christians, probably especially in America, think of God as a person. And I acknowledge that the kind of Christianity I have studied, and which I've been talking about here, is not what most people in churches probably think about. Although it is very much mainstream in terms of the history of theology.
The term "personal," like so many others, may apply differently to God than to a flesh-and-blood human.
For example, Wikipedia quotes Tillich:
Quote:'Personal God' does not mean that God is a person. It means that God is the ground of everything personal and that he carries within himself the ontological power of personality...
This is very compatible with philosophical views of God. For example, the Aristotelian/Thomist views which define the term "omnipotent" not as "can do anything," but as "the end and instigator of all potency."
As always, Christianity has within itself so many variations that we can't make a simple blanket argument against all versions.
