Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T16:19:59.641Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
Series:   Elements in Religion and Monotheism

Monotheism and Human Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2021

Andrew M. Bailey
Andrew M. Bailey
Affiliation:
Yale-NUS College

Summary

The main question of this Element is how the existence, supremacy, and uniqueness of an almighty and immaterial God bear on our own nature. It aims to uncover lessons about what we are by thinking about what God might be. A dominant theme is that Abrahamic monotheism is a surprisingly hospitable framework within which to defend and develop the view that we are wholly material beings. But the resulting materialism cannot be of any standard variety. It demands revisions and twists on the usual views. We can indeed learn about ourselves by learning about God. One thing we learn is that, though we are indeed wholly material beings, we're not nearly as ordinary as we might seem.
Get access

Keywords

monotheismpersonal ontologypersonal identitymaterialismdualism
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in Religion and Monotheism
Online ISBN: 9781108966962
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 17 June 2021

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

Alston, William P. (1993). Aquinas on theological predication. In Stump, Eleonore, ed., Reasoned Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology in Honor of Norman Kretzmann. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Al-Ghazali, A. H. M. (2005). Al-Ghazali on Divine Essence: A Translation from the Iqtisad Fi Al-I-Tiqad with Notes and Commentary, trans. Dennis Morgan Davis, Jr.University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
Aquinas, Thomas (1947). Summa Theologiae, 3 vols., trans. The Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Benziger Brothers.Google Scholar
Audi, Paul (2011). Primitive causal relations and the pairing problem. Ratio 24: 1–16.Google Scholar
Bailey, Andrew (2015). The priority principle. Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1): 163–74.Google Scholar
Bailey, Andrew (2017). On the concept of a spirit. Religious Studies 53 (4): 449–57.Google Scholar
Bailey, Andrew (2020a). Magical thinking. Faith and Philosophy 37 (2): 181–201.Google Scholar
Bailey, Andrew (2020b). Material through and through. Philosophical Studies 177 (8): 2431–50.Google Scholar
Baker, Lynne Rudder (2007). The Metaphysics of Everyday Life: An Essay in Practical Realism. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Block, Ned (1995). On a confusion about a function of consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18: 227–47.Google Scholar
Bowers, Jason (2019). A teleological answer to the special composition question. Dialectica 73: 231–46.Google Scholar
Brenner, Andrew (forthcoming). How to be a mereological anti-realist. Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion.Google Scholar
Brower, Jeffrey (2008). Making sense of divine simplicity. Faith and Philosophy 25 (1): 3–30.Google Scholar
Burns, Elizabeth (2015). “Classical and revisionary theism on the divine as personal: A rapprochement?” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 78: 151–165.Google Scholar
Carruthers, Peter (2004). The Nature of the Mind. Routledge.Google Scholar
Chalmers, David (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (3): 200–19.Google Scholar
Cole, David & Foelber, Robert (1984). Contingent materialism. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 65: 74–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Robin (2011). A scientific case for the soul. In Baker, Mark C. and Goetz, Stewart, eds., The Soul Hypothesis: Investigations Into the Existence of the Soul. Continuum.Google Scholar
Crosby, John F. (2001). The twofold source of the dignity of persons. Faith and Philosophy 18: 292–306.Google Scholar
Cucu, Alin & Pitts, J. Brian (2019). How dualists should (not) respond to the objection from energy conservation. Mind and Matter 17 (1): 95–121.Google Scholar
Dauben, Joseph W. (1977). Georg Cantor and Pope Leo XIII: Mathematics, theology, and the infinite. Journal of the History of Ideas 38 (1): 85–108.Google Scholar
Davies, Brian (2004). An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, 3rd ed. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Foster, John (1991). The Immaterial Self. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hart, David Bentley (2013). The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hart, W. D. (1988). The Engines of the Soul. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hasker, William (2010). Persons and the unity of consciousness. In Bealer, George and Koons, Robert, eds., The Waning of Materialism: New Essays. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Herbener, Jens-André (2013). On the term “Monotheism.” Numen 60: 616–48.Google Scholar
Himma, Kenneth (2011). Explaining why this body gives rise to me qua subject instead of someone else: An argument for classical substance dualism. Religious Studies 47 (4): 431–48.Google Scholar
Hoffman, Joshua & Rosenkrantz, Gary S. (1997). Substance: Its Nature and Existence. Routledge.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Jonathan (2015). The ineffable, inconceivable, incomprehensible God: Fundamentality and apophatic theology. Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 6: 158–76.Google Scholar
Kim, Jaegwon (2005). Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
LaRock, Eric & Collins, Robin (2016). Saving our souls from materialism. In Crisp, Thomas M., Porter, Steven, and Ten Elshof, Gregg A., eds., Neuroscience and the Soul. Eerdmans.Google Scholar
Legenhausen, Gary (1986). Is God a person? Religious Studies 22: 307–23.Google Scholar
Leibniz, G. W (1951). Leibniz Selections, ed. Weiner, Philip. Charles Scribner’s Sons.Google Scholar
Lowe, E. J. (2000). Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lowe, E. J. (2010). Substance dualism: A non-cartesian approach. In Bealer, George and Koons, Robert, eds., The Waning of Materialism: New Essays. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Maimonides, Moses (1974). The Commentary of R. Hoter Ben Shelomo to the Thirteen Principles of Maimonides, trans. David R. Blumenthal.Brill.Google Scholar
McCabe, Herbert (2005). God Still Matters. Continuum.Google Scholar
Merricks, Trenton (1994). A new objection to a priori arguments for dualism. American Philosophical Quarterly 31: 81–85.Google Scholar
More, Henry (1660). An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness. London. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A51302.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltextGoogle Scholar
Moreland, J.P. (2013). A conceptualist argument for a spiritual substantial soul. Religious Studies, 49: 35–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moreland, J. P. (2018). In defense of a Thomistic-like dualism. In Loose, Jonathan, Menuge, Angus, and Moreland, J. P., eds., The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism. Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Moreland, J. P. & Rae, Scott B. (2000). Body & Soul: Human Nature & the Crisis in Ethics. 3rd paperback ed. InterVarsity Press.Google Scholar
Mullins, Ryan (2020). God and Emotion. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ney, Alyssa. (2008). Defining physicalism. Philosophy Compass 3: 1033–48.Google Scholar
Nida-Rümelin, Martine (2013). The argument for subject body dualism from transtemporal identity defended. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (3): 702–14.Google Scholar
Oppy, Graham (2014). Describing Gods: An Investigation of Divine Attributes. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Owen, Matthew (forthcoming). Circumnavigating the causal pairing problem with hylomorphism and the integrated information theory of consciousness. Synthese.Google Scholar
Place, U. T. (1956). Is consciousness a brain process? British Journal of Psychology 47: 44–50.Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1974). The Nature of Necessity. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (2006). Against materialism. Faith and Philosophy 23 (1): 3–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (2007). Materialism and Christian belief. In Zimmerman, Dean and van Inwagen, Peter, eds., Persons: Human and Divine. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, Joshua (2018). Against nonreductive physicalism. In Loose, Jonathan, Menuge, Angus, and Moreland, J. P., eds., The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism. Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, Joshua & Bailey, Andrew (forthcoming). “How valuable could a person be?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.Google Scholar
Ratzsch, Del (1987). Nomo(theo)logical necessity. Faith and Philosophy 4 (4): 383–402.Google Scholar
Rosen, Gideon (2012). Abstract objects. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abstract-objects/Google Scholar
Shirazi, Sadr al-Din (1981). The Wisdom of the Throne, trans. James Winston Morris. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Jonathan (2018). Laws for metaphysical explanation. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 82: 1–22.Google Scholar
Schwitzgebel, Eric (2014). The crazyist metaphysics of mind. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92: 665–82.Google Scholar
Segal, Aaron (forthcoming). Dependence, transcendence, and creaturely freedom: On the incompatibility of three theistic doctrines. Mind.Google Scholar
Segal, Aaron & Goldschmidt, Tyron (2017). The necessity of idealism. In Goldschmidt, Tyron and Pearce, Kenneth L., eds., Idealism: New Essays in Metaphysics. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smart, J. J. C. (1959). Sensations and brain processes. The Philosophical Review 68: 141–156.Google Scholar
Smith, Peter & Jones, O. R. (1986). The Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Swinburne, Richard (1997). The Evolution of the Soul, revised ed. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Swinburne, Richard (2019). Are We Bodies or Souls? Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Taliaferro, Charles (1994). Consciousness and the Mind of God. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taliaferro, Charles (1997). Possibilities in philosophy of mind. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57: 127–137.Google Scholar
Tuggy, Dale (2017). On counting gods. TheoLogica 1: 188–213.Google Scholar
Turner, Denys (2013). Thomas Aquinas: A Portrait. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Unger, Peter (2005). All the Power in the World. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
van Inwagen, Peter (1990). Material Beings. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
van Inwagen, Peter (2002). What do we refer to when we say “I”? In Loose, Jonathan, Menuge, Angus, and Moreland, J. P., eds., The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics. Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
van Inwagen, Peter (2014). What is an ontological category? In Existence: Essays in Ontology. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
van Inwagen, Peter (2015). Metaphysics, 4th ed. Westview Press.Google Scholar
White, R. M. (2010). Talking about God: The Concept of Analogy and the Problem of Religious Language. Ashgate.Google Scholar
Willard, Dallas (1999). The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. HarperOne.Google Scholar
Yang, Eric T. & Davis, Stephen T. (2017). Composition and the will of God: Reconsidering resurrection by assembly. In Byerly, T. Ryan and Silverman, Eric J., eds., Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays About Heaven. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zagzebski, Linda (2001). The uniqueness of persons. Journal of Religious Ethics 29: 401–423.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Monotheism and Human Nature
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Monotheism and Human Nature
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Monotheism and Human Nature
Available formats
×