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Among the Latin Church Fathers, there was a widespread understanding of divine eternity as timelessness, while time as we know it was regarded to be relative to the existence of material or at any rate mutable entities, to, that is, the existence of creatures. Now if we suppose that God has also created (or might have created) purely spiritual beings or an initially unformed matter, one may wonder how these relate to time – to our time – as well as to the timeless eternity of their creator. This is an edition, translation and extended commentary of two short texts by Ralph of Battle, an intimate of Saint Anselm, concerning this very problem: a “sentence” from Jerome, and a treatise setting out a theological position which according to Ralph some have taken in the wake of Jerome’s testimony. Ralph’s rendering of the position in question is contextualized by looking at his other works and comparing Ralph’s and Jerome’s lines of reasoning to that of Augustine, who considers the issue in various works without, however, feeling able to settle the matter conclusively.
Christian theology, with very few exceptions, has recently been rather dismissive of the ontological proof, or has suggested that it should not be regarded as a proof of the existence of God at all. Yet the argument has been held in high esteem during Western intellectual history; philosophers have for the most part treated it with respect since its revival in the second half of the twentieth century. This essay takes a fresh look at four prominent versions of the ontological proof: Anselm’s Proslogion arguments, the argument put forward by Descartes, and the modal argument of Leibniz defended by Hartshorne and, with reservations, by Plantinga. Did Anselm intend to prove the existence of God, and how do his arguments relate to their modern counterparts? The core of this essay is an examination, with an eye on contemporary theology, of the most frequently raised objections against non-modal and modal ontological arguments. While none of these objections appears to be successful, the most promising one, perhaps, is to deny the logical possibility of a most perfect being altogether. The upshot, however, is that the prospects for a refutation of either the non-modal or the modal ontological argument are much less bright than prevailing sentiment in theology has it.