RA023 The Argument from Motion

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We're back with a new episode! This time we tackle the Argument from Motion as presented in Ed Feser's book Five Proofs of the Existence of God . • **Correction: it's not quite right that one key difference between classical theists and theistic personalists (or Anselmian perfect being theists) is that the former don't believe God to be personal but the latter do. Feser explains why this is incorrect on pp. 190-1 of Five Proofs of the Existence of God: • The view is called 'theistic personalism' because it essentially treats God as the unique member of a species falling under the genus person, alongside other species of persons like human beings and angels, and differing from them in lacking their limitations on power, knowledge, goodness, and so forth. (Note that what distinguishes neo-theism or theistic personalism from classical theism is not that it regards God as personal as opposed to impersonal. Since most classical theists attribute intellect and will to God, they too generally regard God as personal. Rather, what sets the views apart is that theistic personalists regard God’s being personal as entailing that he falls under a genus, and that in this and other ways he is not simple or noncomposite.) • Gaven Kerr also tries to show that the Thomistic God can be personal, pace Plantinga, in the chapter of Aquinas's Way to God entitled Esse Tantum (http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/…/ac.... I do wonder, though, whether attributing certain attributes to God that are analogical to ordinary personal attributes counts as attributing personal attributes to God. Maybe it counts in an analogical sense. :) At any rate, we can still differentiate between classical theists and theistic personalists by noting that the former don't take God to be a person univocally whereas the latter do.

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