PROPERLY BASIC
186God’s character may remain constant
(God’s goodness, wisdom, and so on),
in some regards God changes. Hence
God, along with creation, is in process,
or becoming. Process philosophy has a
strong commitment to the role of crea-
turely free will and self-determination.
This changes the way that God’s omnipo-
tence is understood: God does not exer-
cise power through coercion but rather
influences our free will by offering possi-
bilities that we may choose to actualize.
Contemporary proponents include John
B. Cobb, Jr., David Ray Griffin, and
Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki.
PROPERLY BASIC. A term introduced
by Alvin Plantinga to refer to beliefs that
have epistemic merit but not on the basis
of other beliefs or independent evidence.
From Plantinga’s perspective, examples
may include the belief that one exists or
that there is a God; these may be beliefs
that may be proper for a person to hold
without inference. Controversy has arisen
over when proper beliefs may be under-
mined by contrary inferential arguments,
sometimes called “defeaters.”
PROPERTY. According to some theists,
the whole cosmos is God’s property.
Passages in the Hebrew Bible, Christian
New Testament, and the Qur’an support
the idea that the natural world belongs to
God as its Creator. Some theists maintain
that this entails that creatures do not have
absolute ownership rights even over
themselves, but are called to be stewards
or trustees of the created order. Other
theists hold that the cosmos has been
given to creatures, and thus the creature
has been given itself and the things it
makes as its possessions. Apart from
the role of property in a philosophy of
creation, philosophers of religion have
debated the justification of property (to
what extent are property rights a function
of contracts and covenants?) and the
limits of ownership (must I give surplus
wealth away to those in chronic need?).
At least among human beings, claims of
property are customarily analyzed in
terms of rights and duties. If you own this
dictionary, for example, you may use it as
you will, others have a duty not to use it
without your consent, and if someone
were to so use it, you would have a right
for due compensation.
The term ‘property’ is also used to refer
to ‘attribute’ as in being the color blue,
being a square, and so on. Except in the
case of haecceities, properties are multi-
ply exemplifiable; that is, they can be
exemplified by more than one thing.PROPHET. A person inspired directly by
the divine or through a messenger, such
as an angel, to spread religious teachings
about the divine.PROPOSITION. Propositions are state-
ments that are true or false and not