RE: Potential Christian-Platonist Contradiction?
November 15, 2013 at 10:13 pm
(This post was last modified: November 15, 2013 at 10:19 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
(November 13, 2013 at 2:36 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: If the only good is God - which the Platonistic answer to the Euthyphro Dilemma and the privation view of evil necessitate and entail - then God could never have done anything in the service of producing a greater good. He is the ONLY good. Producing anything entails decreasing the amount pf good in reality necessarily. So theodicies like Plantinga's Free-will Defense can't even get off the ground, since their whole point is to explain evil existing as the necessary result for God to bring about a greater good.You present a very insightful and, at least to me, original critique of theodicy. Bravo! I wasn't expecting that one.
At the same time, I'm not certain that this critique applies to Swedenborg's theology, which I do not expect you to know. As a student of him I myself am still working out my understanding the metaphysics of Swedenborg, which I see as Panentheistic in nature.
I cannot speak as to its effectiveness as a rebuttal to Plantinga since I have never seriously looked into his work.
(November 15, 2013 at 7:52 am)enrico Wrote: Suppose you are God.I may be a pompous ass, but I'm not that arrogant! ;-)
(November 15, 2013 at 7:52 am)enrico Wrote: ...you transform your mental energy into a space in which you put your mental creation...the air come next ...The light and heat come next...The water... the matter.Ready, fire, aim. That's not how creation, as I understand it from Swedenborg, works.
