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Is Necessity Necessary?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

J. A. Martin Jr
J. A. Martin Jr
Affiliation:
Professor of Religion, Columbia University
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Extract

Q: If necessity is the mother of invention, whence necessity?

A. (Thesis): The matrix of necessity in God-talk is religious experience, philosophically interpreted. The interpreters, theists and non-thesists, have indeed been inventive.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , September 1975 , pp. 329 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

page 329 note 1 Findlay, J. N., ‘Can God's Existence Be Disproved?’ Flew, A. N. and Macintyre, A., Ed., New Essays In Philosophical Theology. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1955, pp. 47 ff.Google Scholar

page 329 note 2 Hick, John, ‘Necessary Being’, Journal of Philosophy, 1960, p. 726.Google Scholar

page 329 note 3 Tillich, Paul, The Courage To Be, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952.Google Scholar

page 330 note 1 Daher, Adel, ‘God and Factual Necessity’, Religious Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, March 1970, pp. 23 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 330 note 2 Plantinga, Alvin, ‘Necessary Being’ in Plantinga, Alvin, ed. Faith And Philosophy, Grand Rapids: Erdman's Publishing Co., 1964, pp. 97 ff.Google Scholar

page 330 note 3 Daher, , op. cit., p. 31.Google Scholar

page 331 note 1 Webster's Third International Dictionary of The English Language, unabridged. Springfield, Mass.: G. and C. Merriam Co., 1961, pp. 1510–11.Google Scholar

page 332 note 1 Hartshorne, Charles, Man's Vision of God, Chicago: Willet Clarke and Co., 1941.Google Scholar Cf. Also The Divine Relativity, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948.Google Scholar

page 333 note 1 Eliade, Mircea, The Scared and The Profane, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1959Google Scholar, and other publications of this prolific writer.

page 333 note 2 Gerardus, Van, Leeuw, Der, Religion In Essence and Manifestation. Harper Torchbook, Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 1967.Google Scholar

page 333 note 3 Dodd, C. H., The Bible and The Greeks, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964, p. 66.Google Scholar For these interpretations of the linguistic materials I am indebted to an unpublished essay of a former student, Fr. Richard Vaggione.

page 334 note 1 Cf. Munitz, Milton, The Mystery of Existence, New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1965.Google Scholar

page 334 note 2 Cf. Hepburn, Ronald, Christianity And Paradox, London: Watts, 1958.Google Scholar

page 334 note 3 There is, for instance, an unfortunate conflation of issues in the discussion of contingency by Gilkey, Langdon in his Naming The Whirlwind (Indianopolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1969).Google Scholar Gilkey's attempt to relate linguistic to moral, existential, and other forms of ‘ultimacy’ is, however, salutary and suggestive. The program reflected in his volume is close to the program we wish to commend and facilitate.