Array
(
    [fullTitle] => God, Personhood, and Infinity: Against a Hickian Argument
    [abstract] => Criticizing Richard Swinburne’s conception of God, John Hick argues that God cannot be personal because infinity and personhood are mutually incompatible. An essential characteristic of a person, Hick claims, is having a boundary which distinguishes that person from other persons. But having a boundary is incompatible with being infinite. Infinite beings are unbounded. Hence God cannot be thought of as an infinite person. In this paper, I argue that the Hickian argument is flawed because boundedness is an equivocal notion: in one sense it is not essential to personhood, and in another sense—which is essential to personhood—it is compatible with being infinite.
    [authors] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [givenName] => Mohammad Saleh
                    [affiliation] => Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
                )

        )

    [keywords] => Array
        (
            [0] => Personal Conception of God
            [1] => Personhood
            [2] => Infinity
            [3] => John Hick
        )

    [doi] => 10.24204/ejpr.v12i1.2987
    [datePublished] => 2020-03-25
    [pdf] => https://www.philosophy-of-religion.eu/menuscript/index.php/ejpr/article/view/2987/version/638/2539
)
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God, Personhood, and Infinity: Against a Hickian Argument

Mohammad Saleh
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v12i1.2987

Abstract

Criticizing Richard Swinburne’s conception of God, John Hick argues that God cannot be personal because infinity and personhood are mutually incompatible. An essential characteristic of a person, Hick claims, is having a boundary which distinguishes that person from other persons. But having a boundary is incompatible with being infinite. Infinite beings are unbounded. Hence God cannot be thought of as an infinite person. In this paper, I argue that the Hickian argument is flawed because boundedness is an equivocal notion: in one sense it is not essential to personhood, and in another sense—which is essential to personhood—it is compatible with being infinite.

Keywords: Personal Conception of God

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