Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T07:57:27.815Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Divine maximal beauty: a reply to Jon Robson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2013

MARK IAN THOMAS ROBSON*
Affiliation:
Head of Philosophy, St Robert of Newminster RC School, Washington, Tyne and Wear, NE38 8AF, UK e-mail: robson.m1@sunderlandlearning.net

Abstract

In this article I reply to Jon Robson's objections to my argument that God does not contain any possible worlds. I had argued that ugly possible worlds clearly compromise God's beauty. Robson argues that I failed to show that possible worlds can be subject to aesthetic evaluation, and that even if they were it could be the case that ugliness might contribute to God's overall beauty. In reply I try to show that possible worlds are aesthetically evaluable by arguing that possible worlds are maximally rich representations of possible events. I further argue that nothing in God's being can be aesthetically non-evaluable since God must be maximal beauty – a beauteous maximality which needs no ugliness. Finally I show in what sense Christ's heavenly scars can be beautiful.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Robert, Adams (1979) ‘Theories of actuality’, in Loux (1979), 190209.Google Scholar
Ayres, Lewis (2004) Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balthasar, Hans Urs von (1994) Theodrama: Theological Dramatic Theory, IV: The Action (San Francisco: Ignatius Press).Google Scholar
Begbie, Jeremy S. (2000) Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
Begbie, Jeremy S. (2007) ‘Beauty, sentimentality and the arts’, in Treier et al. (2007), 4569.Google Scholar
Burrell, David B. (1986) Knowing an Unknowable God (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press).Google Scholar
Burrell, David B. (2013) ‘Creatio ex nihilo recovered’, in Soskice, Janet (ed.) Creatio ‘Ex Nihilo’ and Modern Theology, Modern Theology, Special Issue, 29, 521.Google Scholar
Craig, William Lane (1999) The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Eugene OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers).Google Scholar
Craig, William Lane (2001) ‘The middle knowledge view’, in Beilby, James & Eddy, Paul (eds) Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press), 119143.Google Scholar
Currie, Gregory (2010) Narratives and Narrators (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Divers, John (2002) Possible Worlds (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
Gaines, Simon Francis (2003) Will There Be Free Will in Heaven? (London: Continuum).Google Scholar
Hart, David Bentley (2003) Beauty of the Infinite (Cambridge: Eerdmans).Google Scholar
Herman, Bruce (2007) ‘Wounds and beauty’, in Treier et al. (2007), 110120.Google Scholar
Hopkins, G. M. (1970) The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gardner, W. H. & MacKenzie, N. H. (eds) (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel (2007) [1790] Critique of Judgement, Meredith, James (tr.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Kekes, John (2001) The Morality of Pluralism (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Kellenberger, James (2001) Moral Relativism, Moral Diversity and Human Relationships (University Park PA: Pennsylvania University Press).Google Scholar
Kilby, Karen (2012) Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans).Google Scholar
Leibniz, G. W. (1902) [1714] Monadology, Montgomery, George (tr.) (La Salle: Open Court Publishing).Google Scholar
Loux, Michael (1979) The Possible and the Actual (New York: Cornell University Press).Google Scholar
Nichols, Aidan (2000) No Bloodless Myth (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press).Google Scholar
Nichols, Aidan (2011) A Key to Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness and Truth (Oxford: Blackwell).Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1973) ‘Transworld identity or world-bound individuals’, in Loux (1979), 146165.Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1976) ‘Actualism and possible worlds’, in Loux (1979), 253273.Google Scholar
Robson, Jon (2012) ‘Do possible worlds compromise God's beauty? A reply to Mark Ian Thomas Robson’, Religious Studies, 48, 515532.Google Scholar
Robson, Mark Ian Thomas (2008) Ontology and Providence in Creation: Taking Ex Nihilo Seriously (London: Continuum).Google Scholar
Robson, Mark Ian Thomas (2011) ‘Possible worlds and the beauty of God’, Religious Studies, 47, 479492.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daniel, Treier, Husbands, Mark, & Lundin, Roger (eds) (2007) The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press).Google Scholar
Walford, John E. (2007) ‘The case for a broken beauty: an art historical viewpoint’, in Treier et al. (2007), 87109.Google Scholar
Walton, Kenneth L. (1970) ‘Categories of art’, Philosophical Review, 79, 334367.Google Scholar