Creative Thinking about God and Respect for Christian Identity

Abstract

In the article I refer to the philosophy of William Hasker and his proposal to reconcile respect for the basic dogmas of Christianity with the contemporary standards  of knowledge and the needs of people today. In the first part I analyse Hasker’s view on the idea of Christian philosophy.  Since he assumes the truthfulness of the main doctrines of Christianity, he is not opposed to being referred to as a Christian philosopher, but neither is he enthusiastic about this name. This attitude is the result of his conviction that the state of absolute neutrality is not possible in philosophy and that  regardless of the views accepted as true by a given thinker the requirement for good philosophy is fairness and evaluating all perspectives and beliefs for their internal coherence and their correspondence with the evidence. Therefore, Hasker first tries very carefully to reconstruct positions different from his own and to track down various difficulties in them, especially contradictions. In my opinion, however, the objection of self-contradiction is ineffective when applied to philosophical positions which, as a rule, use vague concepts. The same applies to the claim that these positions are contradictory to evidence, because one of such vague notions is also the notion of evidence. That is why philosophical claims have the extraordinary ability to persist in life or unexpectedly revive after being considered definitively dead. It does not follow from this that one cannot convincingly justify one’s position using less formal criteria.  In the second part I focus on the rhetorical device used by Hasker to make his concept of God more attractive. He suggests that we should shape our concept of God based on our idea of ​​a great man, i.e. one who educates children to live independently and is able to effectively and fairly manage large groups of people. Leaving aside the accusation of anthropomorphism, the question arises about the epistemic value of this image, which is not universal, changes over time and depends on the conditions in which people live. The content of this image proposed by Hasker isn’t also consistent with the idea of ​​the God of Christian orthodoxy, which is dominated by traditional rather than open theism. This is where the problem of linking creative thinking and respect for Christian identity arises. Regardless of the opinion that open theism has among traditional theists, Hasker supports the concept of a strong Christian identity determined by a universally recognized creed. I propose to treat this identity a little more flexibly.