Introduction: thinking about personal and a-personal aspects of the divine
- In this opening chapter, the authors outline some of the general challenges in thinking about the nature of God or the Divine, and some of the challenges which pertain to the more specific question of whether and in what sense God is a person or is personal. After noting these, they provide a brief survey of how some of the major approaches to thinking about God within philosophy of religion and theology have approached the question of whether God is a person or personal. They note that disagreements about the (a-)personal nature of the Divine often stem from fundamental disagreements about how reflection on the nature of God should proceed, or how religious language functions. They also note that the topic of God’s (a-)personal nature is of fundamental religious importance, and one’s stance on that question has ramifications for many areas of religious doctrine and practice.
