Dombrowski, Daniel A. “Describing God.” Philosophical Inquiry 16, nos.3-4 (1994): 74-82.

Abstract

This is a response to Michael Durrant’s “The Meaning of God” (Philosophy 31 [1992], 71-84) in which he defended three theses: (i) God is not a proper name, contra Janet Martin Sockice’s argument in Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); (ii) God can be described; and (iii) all previous efforts, including Charles Hartshorne’s, to reconcile the God of the philosopher and the God of religion have failed. Dombrowski responds to this third thesis. Durant has two criticisms of Hartshorne: he rejects the view that God is an effect or that God is finite in whatever unique or special sense, and he rejects the view that God is cause in a radically unique and eminent sense. In response to Durant’s criticism that Hartshorne makes God an exception to metaphysical categories rather than the prime exemplification of them, Dombrowski points out that Hartshorne held that God is unique as the upper limit of the series of causes and effects; God’s uniqueness follows from, rather than contradicts, these series. Hartshorne’s description of God, moreover,  as “radically unique” is somewhat misleading; it is meant not so much to play into the hands of those who hold that God cannot be described but only named, but to indicate that God is the only one who can be described by offering a maximal response to concrete reality. (Barry L. Whitney, University of Windsor)