Ed Buckner studied and taught philosophy at the University of Bristol in England. He has a number of publications in the area of both analytic philosophy and medieval logic and philosophy. He is the author, with Jack Zupko, of Duns Scotus on Time & Existence, a translation of an early work by the philosopher-theologian Duns Scotus, with a comprehensive and detailed commentary. Now mostly retired, he curates the Logic Museum, a collection of primary sources in the history of logic.
In this book, I argue that all reference is story-relative. We cannot understand reference to God, nor to his prophets, nor to any other character mentioned in the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim scriptures, without reference to those very scriptures.
The concept of logical form is essential to any discussion of identity, and hence to any discussion of the Trinity.
Can we justify a distinction between the ‘is’ of identity and the ‘is’ of predication
Sommers questions the doctrine of ‘relationism’, i.e. the view that identity is a relation…
Sommer’s theory of divine fluidity: a solution to the problem of anthropomorphic language in the Hebrew Bible.
I am plodding on with Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief, which I strongly recommend. He is committed to the Christian (and Jewish and Muslim) belief that not only that there is such a being as God, but also that we are able to address him in prayer, refer to him, think and talk about him, and predicate properties of him. This means using unique descriptions like… Read More »Can Kant refer to God?
I have been working through Alvin Plantinga’s excellent (but frustrating) book Warranted Christian Belief, and I am particularly intrigued by his critique of the work of theologian John Hick. Hick began his spiritual odyssey as a traditional, orthodox Christian, accepting what I have been calling ‘Christian belief’. He was then struck by the fact that there are other religions in which the claims of orthodox Christianity—trinity,… Read More »Are all religions the same?
I am making slow (but sure) progress on The Same God? Reference and Identity in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Scriptures. My background is in the philosophy of language, and particularly the theory of reference and singular terms. The research for this book has taken me to some strange places I never expected to visit (and never really knew about before). One of those is hermeneutics,… Read More »Exegetical neutrality
Dale writes: A self is being which is in principle capable of knowledge, intentional action, and interpersonal relationships. A god is commonly understood to be a sort of extraordinary self. In the Bible, the god Yahweh (a.k.a. “the LORD”) commands, forgives, controls history, predicts the future, occasionally appears in humanoid form, enters contracts with human beings, and sends prophets, whom he even allows to argue… Read More »Does God have a body?
It ain’t necessarily so It ain’t necessarily so The t’ings dat yo’ li’ble To read in de Bible, It ain’t necessarily so In God as Biblical Character and as Divine Reality, the Maverick makes the curious distinction between a Biblical character, and the external reality corresponding to the character. The two philosophers [Aquinas and Spinoza] are clearly referring to the same Biblical character when they… Read More »Necessarily so?
Bill Vallicella, the famous Maverick Philosopher, just dropped me a line asking whether, when Thomas Aquinas and Baruch Spinoza use the term ‘Deus’, they are referring to the same being. This is a difficult and interesting question. Bill uses the Latin name ‘Deus’, alluding to the fact that both men wrote in Latin. Latin was the choice of the ‘scholastic’ theologians of the 13th century,… Read More »God and Deus
Last month my publisher gave the green light to start work on The Same God? Reference and Identity in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Scriptures. Yes, that old question of whether Muslims worship the same God as Christians, which surfaced again last year when Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor at Wheaton College, was suspended following her Facebook post citing Pope Francis’s statement that Muslims and Christians… Read More »God and Allah
Dale Tuggy kindly set me up with an account here, so I will say a few words by way of introduction. As Dale notes here, I am a lazy fellow. Or as I say, just as a thing is more noble and perfect, so the longer it takes to reach perfection. I am still working on a book I began in 1984, and perhaps I can use… Read More »Hello from London
