Code: 04529393

Can God Be Free?

Name: Can God Be Free?
Brand: Oxford University Press
SKU: 04529393
Price: 58.16 EUR
Availability: InStock

by William L. Rowe

Language: English
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 184
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2006
More about this

58.16 €

In stock at our supplier
Shipping in 15 - 20 days

Add to wishlist

Best of the Scorpions (Guitar Recorded Versions)
23.94 € -16 %
Buy
1. Hilfe fur Second Life(R)
20.52 € -1 %
Buy
Betriebswirtschaftliche Information, Entscheidung Und Kontrolle
66.61 €
Buy
Critical Pedagogy in Deaf Education
21.32 €
Buy
Am besten frisch gekocht!
24.24 € -4 %
Pre-order
Colpo Lampo
23.14 €
Buy
Critical Analysis of the German Cavalry Operations in the Lodz Campaign to Include the Breakthrough at Brzeziny with Particular Reference to the I Cav
17.30 €
Buy

Give this book as a present today

Order book and choose Gift Order.
We will send you book gift voucher at once. You can give it out to anyone.
Book will be send to donee, nothing more to care about.

Book gift voucher sample Read more

You get 146 loyalty points

Book synopsis

In the three major religions of the West, God is understood to be a being whose goodness, knowledge, and power are such that it is impossible for any being, including God himself, to have a greater degree of goodness, knowledge, and power. This book focuses on God's freedom and praiseworthiness in relation to his perfect goodness. Given his necessary perfections, if there is a best world for God to create he would have no choice other than to create it. For, as Leibniz tells us, 'to do less good than one could is to be lacking in wisdom or in goodness'. But if God could not do otherwise than create the best world, he created the world of necessity, not freely. And, if that is so, it may be argued that we have no reason to be thankful to God for creating us, since, as parts of the best possible world, God was simply unable to do anything other than create us---he created us of necessity, not freely. Moreover, we are confronted with the difficulty of having to believe that this world, with its Holocaust, and innumerable other evils, is the best that an infinitely powerful, infinitely good being could do in creating a world. Neither of these conclusions, taken by itself, seems at all plausible. Yet each conclusion appears to follow from the conception of God now dominant in the great religions of the West. William Rowe presents a detailed study of this important problem, both historically in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, Samuel Clarke, Thomas Aquinas, and Jonathan Edwards, and in the contemporary philosophical literature devoted to the issue. Rowe argues that this problem is more serious than is commonly thought and may require some significant revision in contemporary thinking about the nature of God.