Talk:The nature of God/Archive 1

I agree...this is a fine essay but not really appropriate for an encyclopedia.--Devotchka

Is "What is god?" the best name for this article? Encyclopedias should answer questions, not pose them. I suggest "The nature of God," or something similar. -- Cayzle

Not only that, but "What is the Christian God" or "The nature of the Christian God" seems to be more correct, or maybe "The nature of the Christian God, according to Christians". -- arcade

This is an interesting essay, but it doesn't look much like an encyclopedia article. It's just a speculative line of reasoning or two. It reads more like something that would be an interesting external link on wiki articles regarding agnosticism and epistemology, and even from the God and theism articles. But turning the essay into an article in and of itself seems rather gratuitous. It also tends to discourage bold editing, since I would be twisting and rewriting an individual's essay, rather than trying to improve the way facts are presented. --Wesley

Maybe we should create a new entry on "The nature of God." It could discuss the various views (Aristotelian, Platonic, mediveal neo-Aristotelian, Kabbalistic, process theology, etc.) The entry that we already have on God doesn't cover this topic. In fact, an entry on "the nature of God" might well be classified under philosophy. We could then leave much of the old material aside as a personal essay? RK


 * There's an article on process theology, but most of the other material you list could still stand additional coverage. I'm not sure what the entry should be called; "nature" has a specialized meaning or definition within Christian trinitarian theology, but I suppose it could be used in the article heading in its more common and general sense. My real question, though, is, "what is the role of essays in Wikipedia?" Are we encouraging people to write essays about their favorite topics, pick a title that isn't taken yet and send them in? --Wesley

Just so everyone knows, this pages is a portion of Larrys Text, which is a series of undergraduate introductory philosophy lectures given by Larry Sanger. He put it in Wikipedia during the early days of the project with the intention of turning the text into proper articles. It's been slow going. :) At taht time, essays were fairly common in Wikipedia, so it was decided that they should live at Wikipedia commentary. Recently, those essays have been moved to http://meta.wikipedia.com.

To make a long story short, essays don't belong in the encyclopedia. --STG

Guess it's looking like it's time for me to wikify this one at least, finally... :-)  It's not an essay.  It's a lecture.  Anyway, give me a second. --LMS

I'm wondering that if all of these various considerations about "the nature of God in Western theology" have been moved to the nature of God in Western theology, what really distinguishes the considerations on the the nature of God page from those, really? Maybe the the nature of God page should be just be a series of links to the nature of God in Judaism, the nature of God in process theology, etc. LMS


 * This wouldn't be tenable. There is no one settled description of the nature of God in Judaism, in Christianity, or in Islam. All 3 of these faiths have adherents who follow a Biblical (or Quranic) definition of God. (That is, if you believe that the Biblical or Quranic accounts actually describe the nature of God; I don't think that they do any such thing. They only describe how God acts in the world.) The intellectual elite and clergy of all 3 of these faiths have a great number of believers in the Aristotelian and neo-Aristotelian views of God. Similarly, in Christianity and Judaism there are many followers (and in Judaism, many clergy) who accept some of the various Kabbalistic definitions of God. And there are a suprisingly large number of adherents of both Christianity and Judaism who adhere to the picture of God in process theology. A (probably very) small number of Hindus and Muslims accept process theology as well. In none of these religions is there one fully accepted description of the nature of God. RK


 * On a separate point, I agree that all of these definition of the nature of God in this entry would definately fall under "The nature of God in Western theology". This page could be totally moved there, and integrated with that text. I just wouldn't separate these schools of thought by religion. RK


 * My main point was that it's very strange that there is a the nature of God page, which is filling up with content, when I was told to move the content of the old what is God article from the nature of God to (ultimately) the nature of God in Western theology. And here there is a bunch of stuff on the nature of God page that directly addresses, indeed the subject of the nature of God in Western theology.  Please respond briefly, RK, lengthy excogitations are almost certainly not necessary.  :-) --LMS


 * I see your point. I think that perhaps the earlier ideas about moving the content around to different entries were not very productive. Maybe some people saw your essay as too specialized? We now have a state where the information on this topic is scattered. Ugh. I don't care where this stuff goes as long as the article itself works out eventually to be well-organized. I think that as they currently stand, both The nature of God and The nature of God in Western theology cover the same ground, and so should be combined into one article. I don't think the title of the entry needs to say "...in Western theology", because the word "God" is understood by most English speakers to refer to the Jewish, Christian or Muslim God-concept. (Others may disagree.) Maybe you should just copy all the info from this entry, and put it into the other, and then REDIRECT this page. Then the info in the newly expanded entry could be integrated. RK

The "Aristotelian and Neo-Aristotelian definitions of God" section definitely needs to be integrated with the nature of God in Western theology, because, of course, that's exactly what it's about. --LMS

I don't want to just change every occurence of 'God' in the Aristotle section to 'Gods' or 'a God', because that would spoil the writing, but I seem to recall Aristotle mentioning about 55 Unmoved Movers. He did, I think, distinguish between the Prime Mover and the other 54; those others created individual motions in the heavens and the Prime also affected Earth directly.--Dan

My point is that all of that discussion is part and parcel of a single continuous tradition in Western theology. Plato and Aristotle weren't Christians, but they invented Western theology! So, your (historical) considerations belong under the same general heading and therefore certainly would go under the nature of God in Western theology if anything would. However, they might be better put on a completely differently-named page. --LMS


 * This brings up the subtle but important difference between Aristotelian philosophy (what he actually taught) and the widespread neo-Aristotelian philosophy of the mediveal era. Neo-Aristotelian thought was closely based on the thought of Aristotle, but included innovations that the medieval writers imagined were Aristotle's own views, but probably weren't. RK


 * Please, RK, focus: let's about the articles here, not the subject itself. :-) --LMS

On a different though related topic, shouldn't all the info about Kabbalah get moved off to the actual page on Kabbalah? It's good info, but rather difficult to find at the moment.