Why Study Philosophy of Religion?

Abstract

"Perhaps the best place to start here is with the question of anthropomorphism. Most of the words which we use to describe God and his relationship to man are words which we usually use to describe human actions, attitudes and roles: king, shepherd, judge, potter, forgive, redeem, reconcile. The question thus arises: how can we speak of God thus without making him human- without making God in our own image? Since St Thomas Aquinas, many theologians have wanted to approach the problem of anthropomorphism through the concept of analogy (though treatments of analogy differ significantly from one theologian to the next. Indeed the approach to analogy in a modem Protestant such as Pannenberg has theological presuppositions which are so different from those operating in Thomas that we effectively end up with a rival doctrine."