# Talk:Classical theism

Irrelevent interpolation-
"Since classical theistic ideas are influenced by Greek philosophy and focus on God in the abstract and metaphysical sense, they can be difficult to reconcile with the "near, caring, and compassionate" view of God presented in the religious texts of the main monotheistic religions, particularly the Bible.[3]"
The insertion of the above is an interpolation that appears to grant priority to the Bible, as though Greek Philosophy 'should' be reconciled with it. Whilst this is, or may be, an issue for Christian philosophers, it isnt an issue for Classical Theism per se.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.25.109.197 (talk) 09:42, 3 May 2013 (UTC) 
Classical Theism began with the Greek Philosophers and can be considered apart from Christian Theology which developed out of a synthesis of Classical Theism and Biblical theology. Therefore whilst it is correct to feature Christian considerations and developments as a part of Classical Theism, Classical Theism can be considered seperately and independently of Christian theology. This should be appropriately reflected in the article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.25.109.197 (talk) 13:08, 18 March 2011 (UTC) 

The second sentence is grammatically incorrect.--99.16.65.43 (talk) 23:32, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

"Omnibenevolent" is not a word used by theologians of note. It is mainly used by atheists who wish to disprove God's existence. There are, in fact, no Bible verses to support the idea that God is "omnibenevolent" if that word means giving only good things, and never punishment or trouble.  The Bible says that every good gift comes from God, but that is not tantamount to saying that God sends only good things.  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James%201:17&version=NIV
To my knowledge, there are no people in this rather artificial category "classical theists" who do not believe that God either leads us into temptation sometimes, allows us to have troubles, curses us, controls when we die, punishes us, or sends certain people to hell, perhaps forever.  None of those things are benevolent, therefore God is not "omnibenevolent," according to the "classical theist."  God is benevolent to all in giving them life on earth and the pleasures this life can bring, but that is different from always being benevolent.  The word "omnibenevolent" does not appear in the Bible, in any language. God is omniscient, omnipotent, holy, righteous, and just. Any thought of God's goodness must be balanced by an understanding of God's justice. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14569a.htm
Therefore, because there is no source given for the edit, and I believe it to be false, I am undoing the edit that recently added the word "omnibenevolent."  Pammalamma (talk) 03:57, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

The current texts says some of the views of Plantinga, Swinburne and Craig which not only lack reference, but also seems to be incorrect. For instance, I don't remember ever Plantinga being held as someone who rejects divine simplicity nor Craig rejecting God's timelesness (in this last case, he only rejects timelessness with the universe, but not without it). I'ld recommend a review.
Momergil (talk) 16:23, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Much of this article appears to be a defense of Classical Theism against Open Theism. I would argue that justifying one position against another, without presenting the other, lacks intellectual integrity. The writer appears to have a very obvious bias.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ramulose (talk • contribs) 06:07, 22 February 2018 (UTC) 

@Omnesadeosustentantur, I've noticed that you are interested in the classical theism topic as that you have edited the draft article at my userpage, I think you might also be interested at improving the main page as I've moved the draft here. —कृष्णकुलिKrsnaquli || Contact - 16:36, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification. I'll be checking it if possible in future. Omnesadeosustentantur (talk) 17:29, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I did some reorganizing of the information under Traditions and it seems that the reference to Hermeticism may be irrelevant or original research. I didn't delete it, and instead put it under it's own "Ancient Egypt" heading. However, we need to find a source that describes Hermeticism as classically theist otherwise it should be deleted. Squidroot2 (talk) 00:41, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

@Squidroot2: I've almost totally redone the article; it seems like at one time someone tried to shoehorn Hermeticism and some other stuff in based on their own or minority theories; the bulk of the sources stick to Classical philosophers, Neoplatonists, Christianity, Judaism and Islam; Hermeticism is more varied and therefore more dubious; but my understanding is that it uses more of an emanationist model, which would I think be incompatible with classical theism? A lot of the previously used sources seemed like they'd been found by web searching for 2 words or phrases on the same page, rather than selected as general mainstream sources for the topic. Skyerise (talk) 22:30, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
@Skyerise Hello, I am the writer of first edition of the contemporary Classical theism article. I added Vaishnavism and Hermeticism per their scriptures. While I do not have any reference other than original source for Hermeticism, we can indeed observe classification of Vaishnava traditions and scholars as classical theist especially at works of David Bentley Hart. For that, I believe Vaishnavism should be included in classical theism article. —Krsnaquli || Contact - 15:41, 8 September 2024 (UTC)
@Krsnaquli: the issue is that we may not cite to scripture: we have to cite to secondary sources, and as far as I can tell, secondary sources do not use the term with respect to these traditions. If you can find reliable academic sources which include these traditions within their discussion of classical theism, then please point out these sources. Skyerise (talk) 12:42, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

@Skyerise I do think that this article is of a very high quality and it probably would deserve a nomination if you are interested in that. The only thing that could perhaps be improved further is the "see also" section which currently has only two links. Brent Silby (talk) 09:59, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@Brent Silby: Feel free to nominate the article and to work with the reviewer to resolve any issues. Personally, I would expect the reviewer to want page numbers on most of the citations that don't have them, so suggest that you might want to see what you can do about that before making a nomination. As for the see also section, remember that it is only for links not already in the lead or body of the article. Frequently a long see also list means that the article could use some serious expansion to mention the things in see also. That is, a short see also list can actually be a positive thing. I'll add annotations to what's there, though... Skyerise (talk) 13:12, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

@MediaKyle Given source [1] suggests that Vishistadvaita offers a philosophical model for classical theism on an important theological matter (i.e., mind-body relations). Given this, how objective is it to delete Hinduism section, especially considering that most of the sources on the article is not even mentioning Classical Theism and thus is WP:OR? And which part is not meeting WP:NPOV? —Krsnaquli || Contact - 18:35, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

This was a very drastic change, and I'm not sure about the source. The connection made seems weak at best from what I'm reading, especially if that's the only source we have for this view... I have trouble believing that all the editors who worked on bringing this up to GA missed such a big crucial element of the story. I think @Brent Silby or @Bsilby might be better suited to comment further. -- MediaKyle (talk) 18:55, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
note: Vishishtadvaita School has a Classical Theistic onthology in principle, and David Bentley Hart mentions parallels between Vishishtadvaita Vedanta and Classical Theism on his works, but unfortunately the references on this matter are scarce. On the other hand, this article is full of sources that do not mention the phrase "classical theism" directly (including most used references of Anthony Kenny's "The God of the Philosophers", Brian Davies' "The Thought of Thomas Aquinas", and primary sources such as Aristotle's Metaphysics and Aquinas' Summa Theologica), and it's quite natural for such an article that is ought to be comprehensively addressed yet does not have enough representation on the academia. Thus direct phrase references on sources should not be necessary (nor it is applied to other matters of this article) and yet I provided one at the beggining of the Hinduism section, and the article is mostly written upon validity of principles and Vishishtadvaita undoubtedly satisfies all of those aforementioned principles (i.e. absoluteness, perfectness and transcendence of God; and attributes of aseity, divine simplicity, eternality, immutability, omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and omniscience). —Krsnaquli || Contact - 23:20, 17 July 2025 (UTC)
@MediaKyle Unfortunately @Bsilby/@Brent Silby is barely active on Wikipedia, so I propose to bring the section back until any opposition, for the reasons I've mentioned above. —Krsnaquli || Contact - 04:43, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

I'm waiting for a response. —Krsnaquli || Contact - 12:18, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
My thoughts on the matter haven't changed... Best wait and see what others think, you could notify some WikiProjects of this discussion and that might draw in some more folks to take a look. Cheers, MediaKyle (talk) 12:24, 24 July 2025 (UTC)
I believe @Asteramellus and @Aavindraa might be interested in this matter. —Krsnaquli || Contact - 15:07, 31 July 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for pinging me here. I think details in Hinduism section helps with a more comprehensive view of Classical Theism. There are direct parallels between Vedantic concepts and the attributes of God in Classical Theism. e.g. sarva-kāraṇa-kāraṇam aligns directly to this topic. I think more details can be added from sources to details such as "Vedantic and Bhaktic traditions in Hinduism can be described as Classical theism".
However, I think the unsourced sentence ("Ishvara, the Supreme God, ...") should be removed - even if sourced, seems not relevant and undue. Also the details for "Vaishnava guru Prabhupada..." seems undue here in this broader topic for Classical Theism. Hope this helps. Asteramellus (talk) 13:24, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
I definitely agree, pre-GA article was quite unprofessional and I'm glad editors have improved quite beyond what I could've done alone. Apart from that, I would like to learn your opinion about post-GA Hinduism section [2]. Should it exist? if so, what improvements can we do for that part? Should Ishvara be deleted there aswell? I think the section should exist, and Wainwright's article that is referred on Vishishtadvaita page [3] [4] could be used here to emphasize the parallels between Vishishtadvaita's onthology and classical theistic notion of God. But I also do not want to limit the Hinduism section with Vishishtadvaita. What other improvements can we do?  I understand other editors' concerns about the GA status and I would do my best to introduce a Hinduism section that is aligned with the status of the article. I would also like to learn @MediaKyle's opinions about current status of the debate. Thanks —Krsnaquli || Contact - 14:13, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
yes the post-GA Hinduism section link you gave is good with Ishvara details [2]. I think from the previous version of the section, maybe details such as these can be added:
1. Vedantic and Bhaktic traditions in Hinduism can be described as Classical theism.
2. In Hinduism, God is characterized by the concepts of Singular Absolute Being ("Parabrahman") and Absolute Self ("Paramātman").
3. In Vaishnavism, a Hindu sect; the Supreme God, who is mentioned in the forms of Vishnu and Krishna, is described as sarva-kāraṇa-kāraṇam ("The Cause of all causes"). Asteramellus (talk) 19:00, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
Great, thanks. I support inclusion of these details (using the style of the post-GA article), as they are diretly relevant with the classical theistic notion.  I also want to change the first sentence of the section as the given reference tells that Vishishtadvaita suggests a better classical theistic model in the context of mind-body problem.
I think of this:
"Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta has been proposed as a coherent and philosophically robust mind–body framework for classical theism."
My final concern is that Hinduism or Vishishtadvaita is barely mentioned together with the exact phrase "classical theism". Although I believe David Bentley Hart's book should be enough, this might still create some Verifiability issues. But on the other hand, the article itself has this very issue on its many other parts (e.g. Ancient Greek philosophy is presented as the primordial source of classical theism, yet none of the references directly mention the phrase "classical theism" together with the Ancient Greek philosophy). —Krsnaquli || Contact - 19:54, 1 August 2025 (UTC)
I added the Hinduism section. While creating and referencing the section, I tried to make it compatible with the page as much as possible. I'm open to further changes and developments. and I hope all editors find it well. —Krsnaquli || Contact - 14:27, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

I'm not at all comfortable with that, and I would support someone else removing it. You say this article has OR, well you've just added more OR. I can't be bothered to defend this - I'll nominate it for GAR later, because it no longer meets the criteria. -- MediaKyle (talk) 19:40, 22 August 2025 (UTC)
The issue is that it is almost impossible to write a good and consistent article about classical theism without doing OR to a certain extent. That's why I supported preservation of Ancient Greek origins despite the OR [5]. I am against displaying double standarts on different religious traditions. Almost whole section of "Historical development" [6] is OR, as references doesn't even mention classical theism. I believe it shouldn't be regarded as an issue only when Hinduism is introduced.
I am truthfully grateful to editors who have improved this article to the GA extent. I perceive their work as a great service to humanity as it provided an article that would represent and introduce the classical theism very well. On the other hand, I tried my best to make the Hinduism section compatible with the rest of the article, and to satisfy other editors including you. I believe current Hinduism section is quite compatible with NPOV, language and reference standarts of the article. I am not satisfied with OR situation either, but Hinduism section is not the only part of the article stricken by this problem, and in fact, it is merely a small part of it. —Krsnaquli || Contact - 20:13, 22 August 2025 (UTC)

None of the given sources claim that classical theism is originated from Ancient Greece. However, instead of removing the content, I suggest writing: 
"The Western strand of classical theism is grounded in the ancient Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and presents God as a deity who is immutable, impassible, transcendent and entirely self‑sufficient." —Krsnaquli || Contact - 00:03, 18 July 2025 (UTC)