Motivating the Search for Alternatives to Personal OmniGod Theism: The Case from Classical Theism

Abstract

Analytic philosophers of religion typically take God to be ‘the personal omniGod’ – a (supernatural, immaterial) person who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, and who creates and sustains all else that exists. Analytic philosophers also tend to assume that the personal omniGod is the God of ‘classical’ theism. Arguably, this is a mistake. To be consistent, a classical theist or her supporter must deny that God is literally a person. They need not, however, deny the aptness of using personal language, or of thinking of God as a person or personal at the level of religious psychology.