Philosophy of Religion – Varieties of Theology

Theology and Religion vs Philosophy

Theology = doctrine about the divine; religion = broader worldview; they can come apart.
Not all religious worldviews are theistic; there are non-theistic religions.
Mahayana Buddhism often considered non-theistic: beliefs and practices without a transcendent ultimate deity to worship.
Buddhist emphasis in some texts on anti-metaphysical speculation; focus on liberation from suffering.
Undetermined/unanswered questions in Buddhism (e.g., eternal world, body/soul, existence of a Buddha after death) are treated as potentially distracting from the path to release; the parable of the poisoned arrow illustrates this.
Nagarjuna vs metaphysical speculation: emptiness (Sunyata) as the basic truth; nirvana as realization that all is devoid of permanent existence; nirvana is not a separate realm.
Zhou Dunyi and the religion-philosophy boundary: Confucianism and Taoism blend, making it hard to draw a strict line between religious and philosophical worldviews.

Emptiness (Sunyata): the lack of permanent, unchanging essence in all phenomena.
Nirvana: not a distinct ontological realm but the realization of non-permanence of all entities, including the self.
Nirvana as enlightenment, not a separate divine domain.

Zhou Dunyi (11th c.) sought harmony between Confucianism and Taoism; his position illustrates that some systems mix religious, metaphysical, and ethical dimensions without a clear theology of divinity.
Difficulty of cleanly separating religion from philosophy in certain traditions.

Theistic worldviews foreground belief in worship of divine beings.
Monotheism: belief in a single deity (Judaism, Christianity, Islam; also Druzism, Mandaeism, Bahai).
Polytheism: belief in multiple deities (ancient Egypt, Greece; Aztecs; Incas; Shinto; Santeria).
Henotheism: belief in a supreme deity alongside other deities; Hinduism often cited (Brahman as ultimate reality with diverse manifestations).
Yoruba religion: Olodumare as supreme being with lesser orishas; worship focuses on lesser deities while recognizing a higher supreme God.

Worship worthiness often tied to the divinity’s role as creator, sustainer, and sometimes destroyer of finite things.
Personal creator vs impersonal creator: God as a personal mind vs Brahman as an impersonal ultimate reality.
Theist theologies emphasize a creator with personal relation to beings; others posit impersonal creative forces.

Theistic view: a being worthy of worship must be greater-than-all, possibly the greatest being.
“Perfect being theology” grounds worship-worthiness in maximal/perfect attributes.
This leads to the question: what kinds of properties make a being perfect?

Traditional Abrahamic view attributes to God maximal perfection in power, knowledge, and goodness.
Clarifications are needed: these are about maximal degree, not about absurdities.
Objection-handling: God’s omnipotence is about logically possible states, not logically contradictory ones.
Example: cannot make 2+2=5 or create a square circle; such actions are not within logical possibility. 2+2=5 is not a valid divine possibility.
Similar analyses apply to omniscience and omnibenevolence; these attributes raise questions about the nature of knowledge, goodness, and the existence of evil.
The problem of evil remains a central topic for later in the course.

Eternity: God is an eternal being; distinctions between everlastingness and timelessness.
Semp eternity: God exists at all moments in time (perpetual existence).
Timelessness: God exists outside of time; no before/after from God’s perspective.
Boethius and classical discussions of eternal present vs time-bound existence.

Transcendence: God is wholly other, apart from the natural world.
Immanence: God is present within the natural world.
Pantheism: all is God; the divine is identical with nature.
Panentheism: all in God; God is in the world but also transcends it.
Panentheism is widespread across traditions (African, Indigenous American, Indian, etc.). Bhagavad Gita (9:4) presents a form of immanence/transcendence.
In Abrahamic faiths, radical transcendence is often emphasized, but panentheistic ideas appear in various forms (e.g., mystic traditions).
The challenge: how to speak of a God who is radically different from anything in the natural world.

Cataphatic theology: speaking about God positively (powerful, wise, good).
Apophatic theology (negative theology): God can be spoken of by denying attributes (God is not powerless; God is not ignorant).
Negative approach emphasizes limits of human language when describing a radically other God.

Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon) as a key advocate of apophatic theology.
Language: human concepts impose limits; talking about God using human attributes can mislead.
Negative theology: reduces all divine attributes to the mere fact of existence; avoidsunauthorized positive attributions.
The advantage: allows an open, unlimited sense of divine action and goodness while acknowledging God’s unique nature.
Result: God’s attributes in speech are highly constrained; the core claim is that God exists and is not powerless or ignorant, but many divine qualities are ultimately beyond our language.
Core claim (summary): God’s most basic attribute, in some views, is existence itself; God is the being whose most fundamental property is simply to exist.

Two influential arguments for the necessary existence of a perfect being: Anselm and Avicenna (Ibn Sina).
Will return to questions about divine simplicity, necessity, and the nature of divine perfection.

Theology and religion are distinct concepts; non-theistic religions challenge the assumption that religion requires belief in a deity.
Mahayana Buddhism illustrates a non-theistic but deeply religious framework with metaphysical speculation de-emphasized in favor of liberation-focused practice.
Theism vs. non-theism often hinges on whether a divine being is necessary for ultimate reality and how that being relates to metaphysical questions.
The idea of a “perfect being” grounds worship-worthiness in maximal properties, but these properties require careful clarification to avoid logical contradictions.
Omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence are best understood as maximal, logically possible attributes; they do not license contradictions or impossible states.
Eternity can mean timelessness or perpetual existence, with different theological implications.
Transcendence and immanence describe how the divine relates to the world; pantheism and panentheism offer nuanced middle grounds between strict transcendence and full immanence.
Cataphatic and apophatic approaches frame how we talk about God; negative theology attempts to respect divine otherness by denying human predicates.
Maimonides’ negative theology cautions that most divine predicates are inadequate because human concepts are finite and often imply limits that do not apply to God.