By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
Hartshorne argues that "the bare idea of God" can certainly be generated by secular reason "out of its own resources." For if we can conceive "some," we can conceive "all"; and the only thing we need to form the bare idea of God is the idea of concrete reality universally qualified, i.e., the idea of the universal individual ("Tillich and the Nontheological Meanings of Theological Terms": 28; cf. AD: 44 f.). At the same time, Hartshorne allows that there may be "some hidden absurdity or contradiction in the idea of an individual who completely transcends all restrictions on the range of categorial relationships." And so, while he insists that, thanks to the ontological argument, "at least we are exempt . . . from looking about us to find facts favoring or disfavoring the (contingent or empirical) 'existence of God,'" he also allows that "[i]n order to be sure that the idea makes sense—is not absurd—we perhaps need faith or revelation."
But how could "faith or revelation" possibly offer any such reassurance? Even if one allows that faith or revelation may in some way be reassuring as to the truth of statements concerning God, whether or not such statements make sense and are not absurd, i.e., have meaning, is not a question that faith or revelation is, in the nature of the case, competent to answer.
March 1998
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