What drew you to classical theism?
the david bentley hart book 'The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss' put a lot of it into perspective for me in a way that made sense.
i would say i always held to the tenets of classical theism bc they are just historic christian orthodoxy but maybe was a bit loose particularly with impassability, which i thought kind of undermined the biblical depiction of God and the crucifixion etc. but the book explained it in a way that if God can truly suffer (not analogously) then it means in some way suffering has some kind of eternal foothold in God and is not a finite evil - and i think it enhances the crucifixion more by emphasising that God chose to take this on in his humanity.
aside from that though, i think DBH's explanation of how classical theistic God is not at all an entity among entities like gods, but perfection itself/the ground of being made a lot of sense of something I'd thought implicitly or even heard articulated in a fancy way but never intellectually grasped.
And what's significant about that to me is that I think it kind of makes the concept of God both even more awe-inspiring and transcendetal, but also intimately connected to every aspect of creation. There is no such thing as a goodness or beauty that is not ultimately derived from God. enjoying grapes or a flower or even minecraft can all shed some light on the ultimate goodness that is God.
around the same time i read the book God of Surprises, which is about Ignatian spirituality and how it orbits around this idea that our deepest desires can lead us to God; in that our longing for good, true, and beautiful things can fuel a deeper longing for God, and in turn help us discern when we are desiring something that leads us away from God.
So it all just felt very cohesive. I felt like creation as a means of God's revelation made sense for the first time; I'd often thought of it in some very antiquated allegorical way, like medieval bestiary saying the number of legs on a horse symbolise gluttony or whatever, whereas really it's just that the world is God's canvas for sharing with us his goodness in bite-sized ways we can understand that leave us wanting more.
Additionally, it makes sense of God as relevant to everyone. Evangelicalism I think, bc of its divorce from Christian tradition and literal biblicism, wants everyone to know about God but often ends up feeling to me like God is just some random guy. Like, evangelicals evangelise by convincing you that some random guy you've never heard of before is the key to ultimate happiness.
whereas i guess a more robust theology of classical theism emphasises that God is always present and around us. Everyone has experienced goodness and love in their lives, and that goodness and love is always from God. So God is for everyone the ultimate culmination of everything good; not just a Mary Sue powerful entity among entities who we arbitrarily should know because he created the universe.
And additionally, I often noticed in evangelicalism (and I'm sure this is an issue for catholics and orthodox, but I can only speak to evangelicalism) a kind of creation-negative perspective where created goods are in competition with God. and of course, this can definitely be the case; that's what idols are.
But I feel like people end up spending a lot of time guilting themselves and agonising over, idk, playing video games or watching movies that they actually give these things power. Whereas if you recognise that there is no created thing that can hold any goodness that is not ultimately derived from God, I think it's easier to put things in perspective and value created things as God's gifts to us without guilting yourself into denigrating them.
