Our first article by Ferhat Yöney, follows a familiar theme in this journal, to wit, the conflict between naturalism and theism. He rejects the view proposed by John Mackie and Richard Joyce that metaphysical naturalism is an account of practical morality that is superior to theistic accounts. He pits these naturalistic views against two opposing theistic accounts of the origin and nature of practical morality. On one theistic account an appeal is made to the importance of the afterlife and on the other, the appeal is based on Robert Adams’ divine command theory. The author goes on to argue that both of these theistic views fall short, but for different reasons. In the face of this, the author argues for his own proposal regarding practical morality. Drawing on the work of George Mavrodes, the author’s proposal is that God, via causal revelation, implanted in his creatures an innate disposition to believe in him and to follow his/her moral commands. The fact that so many are so inclined to embrace a theistically grounded practical morality invites the rejection of metaphysical empirical assumptions and shows the superiority of theistic accounts.

Andrew Loke takes up a similar theme in our next article. His view is that it can be shown deductively that the assumption that there are objective moral truths implies God’s existence. These truths are either brute facts, or they are metaphysically grounded in an impersonal entity, a non-divine personal entity, or a divine personal entity i.e., God. Loke thinks that moral truths cannot be brute facts. He agrees with Graham Oppy who points out that there is an essential difference between moral and brute facts. When we consider a necessary moral truth such as ‘if there are babies, one ought not to torture them for fun’ it is obvious that this truth is not independent of personal beliefs. Therefore, with Oppy, Loke rejects the idea that such an objective moral truth can count as a brute natural fact. The reason moral truths cannot be brute facts is that this would ignore a necessary conceptual link between moral obligations and persons, divine or human. No such conceptual link exists between brute facts and persons.

In the next paper, Hamid Vahid argues that the salient features of intention nicely correspond to the main features that Howard-Snyder takes to be constitutive of propositional faith. Appealing to phenomenology, the author argues that an account that focuses on the nature of intentions to form theistic beliefs will deepen and strengthen Howard-Snyder’s account of faith.

In the final article, Kyle Hodge focuses on Augustine’s Platonic ideas about the reality of immaterial forms. Many have seen that Augustine learned from the Platonists that God is an immaterial being. The author, however, goes far beyond this. He identifies convincingly the particular idea Augustine learned from the Platonists, and also identifies several sources, from any or all of which Augustine could plausibly have derived the idea in question. He also throws some light on the general state of Christian thinking about this problem in Augustine’s day.