{"id":13645,"date":"2025-10-26T15:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T22:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/?p=13645"},"modified":"2025-10-26T15:25:53","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T22:25:53","slug":"is-classical-theism-a-type-of-idealism-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/10\/26\/is-classical-theism-a-type-of-idealism-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Classical Theism a Type of Idealism?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">I return an affirmative answer in my <a href=\"https:\/\/open.substack.com\/pub\/williamfvallicella\/p\/is-classical-theism-a-type-of-idealism?r=f3tzc&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;showWelcomeOnShare=true\">latest<\/a> <em>Substack<\/em> entry. Opening two paragraphs:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">If God creates\u00a0<\/span><\/em><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">ex nihilo<\/span><em><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">, and everything concrete other than God is created by God, and God is a pure spirit, then one type of metaphysical realism can be excluded at the outset. This type of realism asserts that there are radically transcendent uncreated concrete things other than God. \u2018Radically transcendent\u2019 means \u2018transcendent of any mind, finite or infinite.\u2019 On this view, radically transcendent items exist and have most of their properties independently of any mind, including the divine mind. Call this realism-1. We could also call it\u00a0extreme metaphysical realism.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">No classical theist could be a realist-1. For on classical theism, everything other than God is created by God, created\u00a0out of nothing, mind you, and not out of Avicennian mere possibles or any cognate sort of item. God creates out of nothing, not out of possibles. (\u2019Out of nothing\u2019 is a privative expression that means \u2018not out of something.\u2019 It does not mean \u2018out of something called nothing.\u2019) We also note that on classical theism God is not merely an originating cause of things other than himself, but a continuing cause that keeps these things in existence moment-by-moment. He is not a mere cosmic starter-upper. That would be deism, not classical theism. Whom do I have in mind? Thomas Aquinas for one. But I am not interested in playing the exegete with respect to his texts. I am thinking things through for myself. Unlike the mere scholar, a philosopher thinks for himself.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I return an affirmative answer in my latest Substack entry. Opening two paragraphs: If God creates\u00a0ex nihilo, and everything concrete other than God is created by God, and God is a pure spirit, then one type of metaphysical realism can be excluded at the outset. This type of realism asserts that there are radically transcendent &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/10\/26\/is-classical-theism-a-type-of-idealism-3\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Is Classical Theism a Type of Idealism?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[191,143,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism-and-theism","category-god","category-idealism-and-realism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13646,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13645\/revisions\/13646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}