Creator Theology and the Shared Ground

The focus of this chapter is Creator Theology’s implications regarding the issues of monotheism, personhood, and embodiment. The plan is to use these primary elements as stage-setting, showing that Creator Theology has impressive advantages primarily over Perfect Being Theology on these matters, but also over Worship-Worthiness Theology. I take up each of these issues in turn, focusing on monotheism in §2, personhood in §3, and embodiment in §4. The conclusion aimed at is that Creator Theology is superior to its competitors, though in a way that is subject to important qualifications that leave room for alternative approaches to claim that the advantages are not decisive.

Theological Systems and Their Derivations

Our first task in this chapter is to assess what we have learned to this point, tabulating what we have learned from our discussions in the two previous sections. Our second task is to note the attributes of deity that carry weight in assessing a metatheology that don’t fall under the starting points of the metatheologies we are considering and weren’t covered in our discussion of the initial shared ground. For this task we can begin by listing some of the common attributes of God that we have not discussed to this point, and assess the capacity of each of our metatheologies for deriving these attributes.

Initial Desiderata on Metatheology

In this chapter, we develop desiderata to be used in rating each approach. We look for what can be gleaned from each starting point, and assess each competitor in terms of what is generated by other competitors. We will thus approach the issue of desiderata on a metatheology, not in search of some simple algorithm to decide between competing metatheologies, but rather in search of something more like rules of thumb to rely on when starting our inquiry. These rules of thumb will favor views that are monotheistic and on which God is a person, but remain open on the issue of whether God is embodied.

Categorizing Metatheologies

The approaches I am focusing on are representatives in a category scheme derived from the twentieth century concern that led to the rise of metaethics, a concern over what to make of the different kinds of declarative sentences in natural language. Some such sentences are straightforwardly descriptive (“The cat is on the mat), while others are evaluative (“Ice cream is the best dessert”), and still others are normative (“Drinking and driving is forbidden”). Here we see how these categories line up with our fundamental metatheologies, with Creator Theology being descriptive, Perfect Being Theology being evaluative, and Worship-Worthiness Theology being normative.

Shaky Ground for Anselmianism

In the last chapter, we got a glimpse of some difficulties faced by PBT. One issue is that of sustaining monotheism, and another is the issue of explaining the personhood of God. In this chapter, I want to press these points further, showing how they are related to an additional issue involving a proper understanding of contingency. We first outline the Creator Theology account of contingency and remind us of its parsimonious ontology of the divine. We then reveal the structure of Perfect Being Theology and how it culminates with an ontological argument. I then argue that this structure threatens ontological profligacy and, relatedly, invites suspicion about its understanding of contingency.

The Shared Ground Prospects for Worship-Worthiness Theology

Worship-Worthiness Theology is the least explored metatheology among our competitors, and this chapter begins the task of remedying this deficiency. Worship-Worthiness Theology begins from the idea that God is supremely worthy of the highest worship. Our task in this chapter is to consider the prospects for this theology for showing that God is a person, that there is only one God, and whether God is embodies. I argue that WWT shares some deficiencies on these issues with Perfect Being Theology (in comparison with Creator Theology), but, more surprisingly, it has advantages over Perfect Being Theology in other respects.

Creator Theology’s Disadvantages

Creator Theology has important but not decisive advantages over both Worship-Worthiness Theology and Perfect Being Theology. So it is important to see how far Creator Theology can go toward sustaining the starting points of these competitor positions. We begin by correcting the history of the discussion of this issue, for the historical discussion confuses our metaphysical issue with an epistemological one. Once this confusion is corrected, we will be in a better position to see that part of the judgement of history on Creator Theology is correct: it can’t derive the starting points of its competitors. We will also be in a position to see, however, how minimal this disability is.

Conclusion

Here we trace the beginning of metatheology to the differences between Anselm and Aquinas, through the Protestant Reformation, arguing that the golden age for metatheology is in post-Kripke twentieth century thought. We then note the ways in which it is much to easy to mix and confuse theological projects with metatheological projects. The results of our study are then summarized in terms of an endorsement of Metatheological Anti-Fundamentalism, the viewpoint that rejects the claim than any of our three metatheologies can be adequate. Instead, the proper version of Anti-Fundamentalism claims that God is best depicted at the fundamental level in terms of being the asymmetrical source of all else who is also supremely worthy of the highest worship.

Perfect Being Theology’s Difficulties

The purpose of this chapter is to consider the degree to which Perfect Being Theology has resources for generating the starting points for Creator Theology and Worship-Worthiness Theology. We first argue that Perfect Being Theology has difficulty sustaining the starting point of Creator Theology. We then look at the more complicated relationship between Perfect Being Theology and Worship-Worthiness Theology. Though our goal is more in terms of finding data at this point than drawing conclusions from it, we will see that Perfect Being Theology is considerably less adept at generating the starting points of competing metatheologies than is Creator Theology.

Worship-Worthiness and Its Drawbacks

Disappointing results from the last two chapters for alternative metatheologies can serve to make Worship-Worthiness Theology quite attractive, or at least more attractive than some would initially think it to be. On this approach, it is not merely a good idea to worship God, but it is our required response. Given this normative understanding of the nature of God, the question to be asked concerns the extent to which this viewpoint can sustain the starting points of alternative accounts, and here I will argue that Worship-Worthiness Theology does a far better job at sustaining the starting point of Perfect Being Theology than it does of Creator Theology