Open AccessCosmic Purpose and the Question of a Personal God
Author(s) -
Andrew Pinsent
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
european journal for philosophy of religion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.25
H-Index - 9
ISSN - 1689-8311
DOI - 10.24204/ejpr.v5i1.250
Subject(s) - personhood , revelation , action (physics) , sense of agency , epistemology , attribution , philosophy , warrant , relation (database) , agency (philosophy) , natural (archaeology) , psychology , social psychology , theology , history , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , database , computer science , financial economics , economics
Purported evidence for purposeful divine action in the cosmos may appear to warrant describing God as personal, as Swinburne proposes. In this paper, however, I argue that the primary understanding of what is meant by a person is formed by the experience of ‘I’ – ‘you’ or second-person relatedness, a mode of relation with God that is not part of natural theology. moreover, even among human beings, the recognition of purposeful agency does not invariably lead to the attribution of personhood in the usual sense. ‘Person’ is therefore a misleading term to use of God on the evidence of cosmic purpose alone in the absence of suitable revelation.