A generalization about religious belief to which there are, I believe, few exceptions is this: The more confident one is in one's religious beliefs, the more willing one is to subject those beliefs to careful scrutiny; the less confident one is in them – the more one unconsciously fears that they cannot withstand such scrutiny – the more eager one is to find a device that would appear to protect them from careful scrutiny. And, more often than not, such a (...) protective device will include an assault upon human reason. (shrink)
In an article that I wrote back in 1987,1 I sought to make some ideas then current in the philosophical literature available to a wider audience of non-philosophers. I was also very hard on John Beversluis, author of C.S. Lewis and the Search for Ra- tional Religion (1985), and even implied, perhaps with less charity than I should have manifested, that his treatment of the problem of evil failed to meet even minimal standards of philosophical competence. I fully expected, therefore, (...) that his response, as set forth in the 2007 revision of his book, would be less than perfectly warm and welcoming. But when, at the behest of others, I finally got around to reading that response, I was stunned. For what I encountered was an amazing disregard for logical rigor, some appallingly bad arguments, and an even more appalling ignorance of the current philosophical literature on the problem of evil. (shrink)
How should we interpret the declaration in I John 4:8 and 16 that God not only loves, but is love? Many philosophically trained Christians will no doubt interpret this, as I do, to mean that love is part of God's very essence; that loving kindness is an essential, not merely an accidental, property of God. Of course the author of I John was not a philosopher and did not, fortunately, employ philosophical jargon in his writings; nor was he likely even (...) familiar with the philosophical distinction between essential and accidental properties. He nonetheless seems clearly to employ "God" as a proper name (as opposed to a title), the name of a distinct person whom we ought to adore and worship, and he says concerning this person that he is love. The point, then, hardly seems to be that the person who is God just happens to love us, as if it were a happy accident that he does; the point seems to be that it is his very nature to love us. In a broadly logical (or metaphysical) sense, it couldn't have been otherwise.1 That this is, at the very least, a natural interpretation seems indisputable. Commenting upon I John 4:8, the conservative New Testament scholar, Leon Morris, thus writes: God is love. This means more than `God is loving'. It means that God's essential nature is love. He loves, so to speak, not because he finds objects worthy of His love, but because it is His nature to love. His love for us depends not on what we are, but on what He is. He loves us because He is that kind of God. (shrink)
Gordon Knight recently challenged my assumption, which I made for the purpose of organizing and classifying certain theological disputes, that a specific set of three propositions is logically inconsistent (or necessarily false). In this brief rejoinder, I explain Knight’s objection and show why it rests upon a misunderstanding.
My purpose in this paper is to set forth a theory of agency that makes no appeal to mysterious notions of agent causation. But lest I be misunderstood at the very outset, I should perhaps clarify the point that my emphasis here is on the term “mysterious” and not on the expression “agent causation.” I shall begin with what seems to me the best possible example of agent causation: the sense in which a supremely perfect God, if one should exist, (...) would initiate or originate his own actions. I shall not, however, simply adopt without modification the standard understanding of agent causation, assuming there to be such an understanding. I shall not make it true by definition, for example, that an agent-caused event can occur only in a context of alternative possibilities and hence can never be necessitated. Neither shall I make it true by definition that the internal states of an agent can never determine, or even causally determine in the case of human beings, a genuine instance of agent causation.1 Instead, I shall begin with the assumption that God represents the best and the clearest example of. (shrink)
In response to Lynne Rudder Baker’s intriguing paper, “Why Christians Should Not Be Libertarians,” I suggest that, even if a Christian simply lets the chips fall where they may with respect to the dispute between libertarians and compatibilists, a Christian should not be a determinist. I also offer for consideration a rather controversial non-Augustinian explanation for the near universality and seeming inevitability of human sin.
In this brief reply to Walls's challenging critique, I try to do two things: first, clarify the most fundamental point on which I think Walls and I disagree, and second, argue that, as surprising as it may first appear, Walls's free-will theodicy of hell requires that God interfere with human freedom in inappropriate ways. (Published Online April 21 2004).
I argue that the idea of a freely embraced eternal destiny in hell is deeply incoherent and implies, quite apart from its incoherence, that we are free both to sin with impunity and to defeat God's justice forever.
In “Three Versions of Universalism,” Michael Murray asks what purpose our earthly life might serve if universalism is true; and in this brief response, I suggesta possible answer.
In “Three Versions of Universalism,” Michael Murray asks what purpose our earthly life might serve if universalism is true; and in this brief response, I suggesta possible answer.
Gordon Knight recently challenged my assumption, which I made for the purpose of organizing and classifying certain theological disputes, that a specific set of three propositions is logically inconsistent (or necessarily false). In this brief rejoinder, I explain Knight’s objection and show why it rests upon a misunderstanding.
I begin with an inconsistent set of three propositions, each of which has the following characteristic: We can find prima facie support for it in the Bible. I then classify theologians according to which proposition they reject, and I identify three different pictures of God: the Augustinian picture, the Arminian picture, and the universalist picture. Finally, I explore some hermeneutical problems and suggest a way in which those who hold the universalist picture might interpret some of the texts upon which (...) the doctrine of eternal punishment has traditionally rested. (shrink)
I believe that Craig's arguments for the possibility of (DT) are important for two reasons: first, because the line he takes, though unsuccessful in my opinion, is the most plausible (or least implausible) line available; and second, because he sets forth with startling clarity some of the propositions that someone who takes this line must be willing to accept. But in the end, I shall argue, he not only fails to establish that (DT) is possible; he also fails in the (...) lesser task of trying to undermine my own argument that (DT) is impossible. Although Craig nowhere gives formal shape it, his argument for the possibility of (DT) seems to run something like this: He first insists that certain propositions other than (DT) are possible in the broadly logical sense, and he then tries to deduce the possibility of (DT) from these other possibilities; that is, he casts about for some proposition p - perhaps a conjunction of several propositions - that will enable him to argue as follows: (1) p entails (DT). (2) p is possible in the broadly logical sense. (3) Therefore, (DT) is also possible in the broadly logical sense. And, of course, the challenge he faces in defending such an argument is this: If, for some p, he.. (shrink)
In my paper, I defend a view that many would regard as self-evidently false: the view that God’s freedom, his power to act, is in no way limited by his essential properties. I divide the paper into five sections. In section i, I call attention to a special class of non-contingent propositions and try to identify an important feature of these propositions; in section ii, I provide some initial reasons. based in part upon the unique features of these special propositions, (...) for thinking that God does have the power to perform actions which his essential properties entail he will never perform; in section iii, I call into question the assumption that a person has the power to do something only if it is logically possible that he will exercise that power; and, finally, in sections iv and v, I try to specify a sense in which divine freedom and the kind of human freedom required by the Free will Defense are in fact the same kind of freedom. (shrink)
