'God' the name

Authors

  • Earl Stanley Bragado Fronda Department of Philosophy University of the Philippines in Diliman

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v12i1.3232

Abstract

The word ‘God’ is typically thought to be a proper name, a name of a defined entity. From another position it appears to be a description that is fundamentally synonymous to ‘the first of all causes’, or ‘the font et origo of the structure of possibilities’, or ‘the provenience of being’, or ‘the generator of existence’. This lends credence to the view that ‘God’ is a truncated definite description. However, this article proposes that ‘God’ is a name given to whatever is that which is the first of all causes, the font et origo of the structure of possibilities, the provenience of being, the generator of existence. If so, then it is a descriptive name. Yet even among descriptive names ‘God’ is unique, for it is neither convertible to a proper name (unlike ‘Neptune’), nor to a definite description (unlike ‘Jack the Ripper’ and ‘Deep Throat’). ‘God’ is an inveterate descriptive name.

Author Biography

Earl Stanley Bragado Fronda, Department of Philosophy University of the Philippines in Diliman

Professor Department of Philosophy University of the Philippines in Diliman

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Published

2020-03-25

How to Cite

Fronda, Earl Stanley Bragado. 2020. “’God’ the Name”. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12 (1):91-115. https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v12i1.3232.