Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета: Серия I. Богословие, философия (Dec 2020)
Classical theism and God’s relation to sin
Abstract
The article deals with the problem of God's relation to sin in classical theism. It is shown that from the perspective of classical theism the problem of God's relation to sin lies in the diffi culty of reconciling the divine attribute of simplicity with the presence of the evil of sin in the world created and controlled by God, and that the future of classical theism directly depends on its ability to off er an adequate solution to this problem. The article provides a critical analysis of two traditional approaches to solving the problem, Thomism and Molinism, which shows that they are not able to off er an adequate solution, because they claim the real diff erence either within the divine will or within the divine knowledge. As an alternative, an aretic approach to understanding the divine is proposed, which makes use of some ideas of S. Menn and L. T. Zagzebski. The central idea of this approach is that the divine is to conceive not as a mental subject exemplifying some set of properties to a maximal degree, but as a single and absolutely simple source of these properties. According to the tradition, which originates in the works of Plato and Aristotle, this source of being and good is identifi ed with virtue itself. It is shown that the aretic approach makes it possible to clarify some important aspects of classical theism. Firstly, it provides an opportunity to demonstrate how God can be love itself, righteousness itself, wisdom itself, omnipotence itself, but at the same time not to be identified with an abstract entity. Secondly, it allows us to conceive of the divine providence in terms of interaction between God and the world, but hierarchically. Third, the aretic approach explains how God, not being a person in the sense of a subject of mental properties, can be the ultimate source of personal properties in the created things. The fact that the aretic approach rejects the unqualifi ed identifi cation of God with a person allows to avoid the problem of evil in the form which is typical for the contemporary philosophical theology and philosophy of religion.
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