5 - Goodness
from Part I - God
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2010
Summary
This chapter takes up the topic of goodness as it relates to Christian philosophical theology and proceeds by examining the central figures chronologically. An alternative would be to try to schematize the field under a series of types, but the usual type-names, often ending in “ism,” tend to be vague in an unsatisfactory way. An author who attributes views to Kant, for example, can be held accountable to the texts of Kant. But an author is at liberty to characterize “deontologists” any way she likes. Because the history of Christian philosophical theology is largely a history of the contact between classical thought (as represented especially by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics) and the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures (known within Christianity as “Old and New Testaments”), the chapter starts with sections on the classical philosophers and the Bible. It then describes the different approaches that have been taken to the relation between goodness and God in the philosophical and theological tradition over the past two millennia within Christianity. When limited to approximately 6,000 words, there is, inevitably, something absurd in such an undertaking. The article will have to be highly selective and take up only a few key figures. This selectivity is the cost that corresponds to the benefit of accountability.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009