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Anselmian adversities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 September 2018

JONATHAN L. KVANVIG
JONATHAN L. KVANVIG*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Washington University-St Louis, St Louis, MO63130, USA
*
e-mail: jkvanvig@wustl.edu
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Abstract

Two competing metatheologies – approaches that propose a certain starting point for generating a proper account of the nature of God – are Perfect Being Theology (PBT), the approach to theology originating with Anselm in his efforts to find a way of demonstrating that such a perfect being exists, and Creator Theology (CT). This article argues that CT has significant advantages over PBT. The adversities that afflict PBT, to which CT is immune, are these: the first concerns parsimony in the ontology of divinity, and the second concerns the explanation of contingency itself. CT generates a simpler defence of monotheism and an account of contingency, whereas PBT struggles to defend monotheism and has no resources for generating an account of contingency, an account needed in order to defend the central claims of the ontological argument.

Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 318 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018

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