Pruss (2016) argues that Christian philosophers should reject Open Futurism, where Open Futurism is the thesis that “there are no true undetermined contingent propositions about the future” (461). First, Pruss argues “on probabilistic grounds that there are some statements about infinite futures that Open Futurism cannot handle” (461). In other words, he argues that either the future is finite or that Open Futurism is false. Next, Pruss argues that since Christians are committed to a belief in everlasting life, they must (...) deny that the future is finite. From here, Pruss concludes that Christians must reject Open Futurism. In practice, Pruss’s argument extends to anyone who endorses everlasting life. In this essay, I respond to Pruss’s argument on behalf of Open Futurism: pace Pruss, the open futurist can consistently believe in everlasting life while also accepting the basic principles of probability theory. (shrink)

Some advocates of the doctrine of meticulous (“risk-free”) divine providence, in response to the charge that such a strong view of divine providence makes God the “author of evil,” have appealed to an authorial model according to which the relationship of God to his creation is analogous to that of a human author and his or her literary creation. This response appears vulnerable to the objection that there is a critical _disanalogy_ between the two kinds of authorship: in the case (...) of divine authorship, unlike that of human authorship, the story is _intentionally actualized_, and thus the divine author is morally culpable for the evils written into that story. Call this the “actuality objection.” In this paper, I develop a four-case defense of the authorial model that aims to neutralize the actuality objection. I also respond to five objections to the authorial model and my defense of it. (shrink)

In this article, I offer an answer to the question: how does Jesus Christ pay attention? By closely examining the claims of orthodox Christology—especially in the theology of the councils of Chalcedon and Constantinople III—I explore options for conceiving of Jesus’s attention in relation to conciliar claims. I propose a model of Jesus’s attention called Theandric Attention, on which Jesus’s way of attending is unique.

Why did the triune God summon creation into being? What did God aim at in the creation of the world? There are two main camps in the Christian tradition in response to this question: divine amorism and divine glorificationism. Recently, Jordan Wessling has forcefully argued for the former. But it seems to me that divine glorificationism follows from doctrinal cornerstones most Christians take to be true. In this paper, I will argue that the metaphysics of creation entailed by the conjunction (...) of divine aseity and divine perfectionism (e.g. the notion that God is the Source and Sum of all Being, Goodness, Beauty, Truth, and Value—all perfections derive from God’s perfections) necessarily entail divine glorificationism. This paper will proceed as follows. First, I will outline both divine glorificationism and divine amorism, briefly sketching arguments for both positions with an emphasis on objections to glorificationism. Second, I will sketch the doctrines of divine aseity and divine perfectionism and argue that both doctrines yield a doctrine of divine ideas and a particular metaphysics of creation’s relationship to God. Third, I will argue that this metaphysics necessarily entails a version of divine glorificationism that answers the concern of divine amorists. Finally, I will conclude by responding to potential objections. (shrink)

This essay offers a critique of the nonfoundational theoretical framework which undergirds a number of approaches to contemporary missiology. In its place, it proposes a particularist approach to the study of Christian mission. On this approach, we do not try to glue our missiological reflection on the top of a theory such as Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shifts. On the contrary, this epistemological orientation requires us to begin with what we think we already know about both (a) the context and (b) (...) the gospel before (c) evaluating how all that knowledge fits together. (shrink)

Is the hypostatic union – the union of divinity and humanity in the person of Jesus – indissoluble? Or did it undergo a temporary suspension during Jesus’ entombment? Although most theologians and philosophers considering the question have opted for the former, this article explores the latter possibility as a way to maintain (i.) Thomas Aquinas’s “subsistence” theory of the incarnation, (ii.) the widespread judgment that the entombed Christ is not a human, and (iii.) the traditional definition of the hypostatic union. (...) Such a position, this article argues, neither runs afoul of Chalcedon’s teaching that Christ’s two natures were united “without separation” nor imperils human salvation. (shrink)

The Christian doctrine of Purgatory (CDP) is resurgent across confessional divides. Many philosophers and theologians have endorsed the Sanctification Account of CDP, according to which Purgatory provides the post-mortem moral purification required for believers to enter Heaven. The Sanctification Account can be embraced by Protestant and Orthodox Christians, who have historically disavowed CDP. However, its proponents typically ignore or repudiate traditional Catholic explanations of Purgatory’s purpose. Consequently, despite claims that Catholic doctrine merely affirms the Sanctification Account, there is a fresh (...) challenge to CDP’s ecumenical reception. In this paper, I offer a new understanding of Purgatory – the Application Account – which should prove acceptable to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. I further show how the Application Account can incorporate Eleonore Stump’s work on atonement to provide a theological development of Catholic teaching on Purgatory which avoids prominent criticisms of the latter. (shrink)

In this article, I am interested in forming an account of how an atheist (which I define as someone who believes that God does not exist) might have faith in God. Assuming an involuntarism position regarding the nature of belief, I examine whether an atheist could have non-doxastic propositional faith in God, but conclude that this is not possible since it would force an individual to believe that_ p_ might exist and that _p _does not exist at (what I call) (...) a first-order level, which is impossible. I then examine accounts of objectual faith (faith in _S_) and suggest that they may offer hope for the faithful atheist. Specifically, it appears that, in certain limited cases that I refer to as _objectual roles_, the object of one’s faith may shift (a phenomenon that I call a “transfer”) depending on who or what brings a given state of affairs about (so long as the enactor of this state of affairs meets the requirement of the role). This strange feature of objectual faith allows for one to have faith in someone or something even if one does not believe in its existence. I conclude by examining how the possible implications of this project may impact Christian theology in particular. (shrink)