Depicting Deity
ISBN: 9780192896452
Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Oxford University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Philosophy Philosophy of Religion;

A theology aims to explicate the nature of God. A metatheology investigates more fundamental issues concerning how to structure such an intellectual endeavour, and where it should begin. Approaches that ignore this more fundamental investigation risk presupposing stances that do not withstand scrutiny, and perhaps would never have been endorsed if considered directly. Approaches that ignore the issue of fundamentality can also switch from one set of assumptions to another without noticing the change in perspective that results, giving rise to a chance of incoherence and an approach that is theoretically disorderly. This book begins with the more basic question of where to begin thinking about God and where it is best to start the project of theology. It does so in a way that offers some hope of a defensible metatheory from which a complete theology, displaying the kind of theoretical elegance and structure we find in our best scientific and philosophical theories, can be developed.

Jonathan L. Kvanvig is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, USA. He was previously Professor of Philosophy at Texas AandM University, Professor and Department Chair at the University of Missouri, and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University. He works primarily in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion, with related work in the philosophy of language and logic. He has published 18 books, and his work has been supported by grants from the Marc Sanders Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Templeton Religion Trust.

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