SERIES

Classical Theism

by Elmar Kremer

Take a deep dive into classic debates about the nature and existence of God.

MEET YOUR LECTURER

Elmar Kremer

Elmar Kremer is interested in 17th and 18th century philosophy and philosophy of religion.

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Episodes

EPISODE ONE

Two Conceptions of God

In this video, Elmar Kremer (Emeritus, University of Toronto) introduces two theories of the nature of God: classical theism and theistic personalism. In part 1, he considers the arguments that have been made for each theory.

EPISODE TWO

In Favor of Classical Theism

In this video, Elmar Kremer (Emeritus, University of Toronto) introduces two theories of the nature of God: classical theism and theistic personalism. In part 2, he considers several arguments for and against classical theism.

EPISODE THREE

God's Omnipotence

Both Classical Theists and Theistic Personalists agree that God created the world. But they disagree about how we should understand God’s causality. Does God cause things in the same sense in which we humans cause things, or is God’s causality fundamentally different from any causality we exercise?

EPISODE FOUR

God's Omniscience

What does it mean to say God *knows* things? This video examines two answers to that question. Theistic personalists hold that God knows things in the same sense in which we know things: by observing them. Classical Theists deny this account and hold rather that God knows things by causing their existence.

EPISODE FIVE

God’s Goodness and Justice

People often say that God is good, and that God is just. But in what sense is God good and just? This video presents an argument from Classical Theism that God’s goodness and justice do not, as Theistic Personalists think, count as “moral goodness”; rather, they follow from seeing God as the fullness of being.

EPISODE SIX

Evil and Goodness in the World

If, as Classical Theists hold, we and all created things exist because God is good, what can evil be? This video presents the privation theory of evil–that evil is the absence of something that ought to exist–and shows how such evil is compatible with a good God.

EPISODE SEVEN

Atheistic Arguments from Evil

Often it can seem like the existence of evil is incompatible with a good and omnipotent God. This video present an argument for that claim put forward by J.L. Mackie, and it examines the different ways that Classical Theism and Theistic Personalism respond to a version of it that concludes that there is no God.