Morality & The Three-fold Existence of God

Leslie Armour

Morality & The Three-fold Existence of God

Article

17/1 - Spring 2012, pages 27-47

Date of online publication: 09 août 2015

Date of publication: 30 juin 2012

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Abstract

Arguments about the existence of a being who is infinite and perfect involve claims about a being who must appear in all the orders and dimensions of real- ity. Anything else implies finitude. Ideas about goodness seem inseparable from arguments about the existence of God and Kant’s claim that such arguments ulti- mately belong to moral theology seems plausible. e claim that we can rely on the postulates of pure practical reason is stronger than many suppose. But one must show that a being who is infinite and perfect is even possible, and any such being must be present in the physical world as well as in what Pascal called the orders of the intellect and morality (which he called the order of charity). Indeed, locating God in the various orders without creating conflicts is problematic. Such arguments are necessarily difficult and sometimes self-defeating but I argue in this paper that there is a promising path.