Proclus (c.412-485) once offered an argument that Christians took to stand against the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo based on the eternity of the world and God’s perfection. John Philoponus (c.490-570) objected to this on various grounds. Part of this discussion can shed light on contemporary issues in philosophical theology on divine perfection and creation. First I will examine Proclus’ dilemma and John Philoponus’ response. I will argue that Philoponus’ fails to rebut Proclus’ dilemma. The problem is that presentism (...) is incompatible with divine simplicity, timelessness, and a strong doctrine of immutability. From there I will look at how this discussion bears on contemporary understandings of divine perfection and creation, and argue that there are at least two possible ways contemporary philosophical theologians can try to get around the dilemma. One option is to adopt four-dimensional eternalism and maintain the traditional account of the divine perfections. I argue that this option suffers from difficulties that are not compatible with Christian belief. The other option is to keep presentism and modify the divine perfections. I argue that this option is possible and preferable since our understanding of the divine perfections must be modified in light of divine revelation and the incarnation. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of religion has broken through disciplinary boundaries and ventured into new areas of inquiry. Examining aspects of the rationality of faith or bringing philosophical techniques to bear on particular religious texts or doctrines, this collection deepens our understanding of the connections between faith and reason.

Which Trinity? : the doctrine of the Trinity -- In contemporary philosophical theology -- Whose monotheism? : Jesus and his Abba -- Doctrine and analysis -- "Whoever raised Jesus from the dead" : Robert Jenson on the identity of the Triune God -- Moltmann's perichoresis : either too much or not enough -- "Eternal functional subordination" : considering a recent evangelical proposal -- Holy love and divine aseity in the theology of John Zizioulas -- Moving forward : theses on the (...) future of Trinitarian theology. (shrink)

`For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I believe this also, that unless I believe, I shall not understand.' Does God exist? Can we know anything about God's nature? Have we any reason to think that the Christian religion is true? What is truth, anyway? Do human beings have freedom of choice? Can they have such freedom in a world created by God? These questions, and others, (...) were ones which Anselm of Canterbury took very seriously. He was utterly convinced of the truth of the Christian religion, but he was also determined to try to make sense of his Christian faith. Recognizing that the Christian God is incomprehensible, he also believed that Christianity is not simply something to be swallowed with mouth open and eyes shut. For Anselm, the doctrines of Christianity are an invitation to question, to think, and to learn. Anselm is studied today because his rigour of thought and clarity of writing place him among the greatest of theologians and philosophers. This translation provides readers with their first opportunity to read all of his most important works within the covers of a single volume. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

What is it for there to be a God, and what reason is there for supposing him to conform to the claims of Christian doctrine? In this pivotal volume of his tetralogy, Richard Swinburne builds a rigorous metaphysical system for describing the world, and applies this to assessing the worth of the Christian tenets of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Part I is dedicated to analyzing the categories needed to address accounts of the divine nature--substance, cause, time, and necessity. Part (...) II begins by setting out, in terms of these categories, the fundamental doctrine of Western religions--that there is a God. After pointing out some of the different ways in which this doctrine can be developed, Swinburne spells out the simplest possible account of divine nature. He then goes on to clarify the implications of this account for the specifically Christian doctrines of the Trinity (that God is "three persons in one substance") and of the Incarnation (that God became incarnate in Jesus Christ). Swinburne finds that there are good reasons to believe the Christian additions to the core Western idea of God. The Christian God builds upon Swinburne's acclaimed previous work to form a self-contained text which will no doubt become a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Paul Tillich's eternal now is the ground from which all things emerge and perish in each and every moment. A Tillichean eschatology involves the gathering of all things finite into the eternity of the present moment, into God. Salvation is present moment. But is the “eternal now” enough? This essay offers biblical and theological critiques of Tillich's present eschatology and posits an eschatology that combines Tillich's “eternal now” with Wolfhart Pannenberg's “end‐oriented eschatology.” The result is an eschatology that recognizes the (...) eternal now in which all things (including all time) belong to God yet with an eye toward the God‐given possibilities of the next moment, the future. The end of being is not cessation; rather, it is the fulfillment of time, the consummation of all things. (shrink)

Arius maintains that the Father must produce the Son without any pre-existing ingredients (ex nihilo) because no such ingredients are available to the Father. Athanasius denies this, insisting not only that the Father himself becomes an ingredient in the Son, but also that the Son inherits his divine properties from that ingredient. I argue, however, that it is difficult to explain exactly how the Son could inherit certain properties but not others from something he is not identical to, just as (...) it is difficult to explain the precise way that a statue inherits certain properties but not others from the lump of bronze it is made from. (shrink)

Augustine of Hippo strongly influenced western theology, but he has often been accused of over-emphasizing the unity of God to the detriment of the Trinity. In Augustine and the Trinity, Lewis Ayres offers a new treatment of this important figure, demonstrating how Augustine's writings offer one of the most sophisticated early theologies of the Trinity developed after the Council of Nicaea. Building on recent research, Ayres argues that Augustine was influenced by a wide variety of earlier Latin Christian traditions which (...) stressed the irreducibility of Father, Son and Spirit. Augustine combines these traditions with material from non-Christian Neoplatonists in a very personal synthesis. Ayres also argues that Augustine shaped a powerful account of Christian ascent toward understanding of, as well as participation in the divine life, one that begins in faith and models itself on Christ's humility. (shrink)

How do Christians reconcile their belief in one God with the concept of three divine 'persons'? This Companion provides an overview of how the Christian doctrine of the Trinity has been understood and articulated in the last two thousand years. The Trinitarian theologies of key theologians, from the New Testament to the twentieth century, are carefully examined and the doctrine of the Trinity is brought into dialogue with non-Christian religions as well as with other Christian beliefs. Authors from a range (...) of denominational backgrounds explore the importance of Trinitarian thought, locating the Trinity within the wider context of systematic theology. Contemporary theology has seen a widespread revival of the doctrine of the Trinity and this book incorporates the most recent developments in the scholarship. (shrink)

Classical Christian orthodoxy insists that God is Triune: there is only one God, but there are three divine Persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — who are somehow of one substance with one another. But what does this doctrine mean? How can we coherently believe that there is only one God if we also believe that there are three divine Persons? This problem, sometimes called the ‘threeness-oneness problem’ or the ‘logical problem of the Trinity’, is the focus of this (...) interdisciplinary volume. It includes a selection of recent philosophical work on this topic, accompanied by a variety of essays by philosophers and theologians to further the discussion. The book is divided into four parts, the first three dealing in turn with the three most prominent models for understanding the relations between the Persons of the Trinity: Social Trinitarianism, Latin Trinitarianism, and Relative Trinitarianism. Each section includes essays by both proponents and critics of the relevant model. The volume concludes with a section containing essays by theologians reflecting on the current state of the debate. (shrink)

The Suffering of the Impassible God provides a major reconsideration of the notion of divine impassibility in patristic thought. The question whether, in what sense, and under what circumstances suffering may be ascribed to God runs as a golden thread through such major controversies as Docetism, Patripassianism, Arianism, and Nestorianism. It is commonly claimed that in these debates patristic theology fell prey to the assumption of Hellenistic philosophy about the impassibility of God and departed from the allegedly biblical view, according (...) to which God is passible. As a result, patristic theology is presented as claiming that only the human nature of Christ suffered, while the divine nature remained unaffected. Paul L. Gavrilyuk argues that this standard view misrepresents the tradition. In contrast, he construes the development of patristic thought as a series of dialectical turning points taken to safeguard the paradox of God's voluntary suffering in the flesh. For the Fathers the attribute of divine impassibility functioned in a restricted sense as an apophatic qualifier of all divine emotions and as an indicator of God's full and undiminished divinity. The Fathers at the same time admitted qualified divine passibility of the Son of God within the framework of the Incarnation. Gavrilyuk shows that the Docetic, Arian, and Nestorian alternatives represent different attempts at dissolving the paradox of the Incarnation. These three alternatives are alike in that they start with the presupposition of God's unrestricted impassibility: the Docetic view proposes to give up the reality of Christ's human experiences; the Arian position sacrifices Christ's undiminished divinity; while the Nestorian alternative isolates the experiences and sufferings of Christ's humanity from his Godhead. In contrast to these alternatives, the mind of the Church succeeded in keeping God's transcendence and undiminished divinity in tension with God's intimate involvement in human suffering. It is precisely because God's divinity and transcendence are never lost in suffering that the Incarnation becomes a genuine act of divine compassion, capable of transforming and healing the human condition. (shrink)

This book contains some rare combinations: first, an author who is as concerned with conceptual clarification as he is with the absolute truthfulness of the biblical text; second, an argument that avoids the common "either-ors" and contends for the importance of both divine sovereignty and divine solicitude in equal measure; third, an approach that espouses divine determinism and divine temporality. No One Like Him takes on the most intractable intellectual challenges of contemporary evangelical theology. Kevin Vanhoozer , Research Professor of (...) Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School John Feinberg judicially reconstructs aspects of the classical view of God in a way that proves more faithful than process and openness of God theisms. Arguably, this is the best study of theology proper in print. Bruce Demarest , Professor of Theology and Spiritual Formation, Denver Seminary Feinberg reads theology with a philosopher's eye and writes it with a philosopher's sensitivity to illogic and incoherence. J. I. Packer , Professor of Theology, Regent College A magisterial work, one that truly deserves to be called a magnum opus....It reveals its author as...perhaps the only modern scholar whose work, like that of Carl. F. H. Henry, can compare in size, detail, comprehensiveness, and intellectual acuity with the accomplishments of the late Karl Barth.... It is not risky to predict that Feinberg's No One Like Him will come to be a milestone in evangelical theology. Harold O. J. Brown , Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary. (shrink)

Being all-good and gracious, God cannot be so envious as not to allow anything else besides him to exist. The necessitarian view thus limits God in His choice of creation and argues that God had to create in the first place out of His infinite ...

This Handbook is intended to show the links between the philosophy written in the Middle Ages and that being done today.

Major reconsideration of the notion of divine impassibility in patristic thought. It is commonly claimed that patristic theology fell prey to the assumption of Hellenistic philosophy about the impassibility of God and departed from the allegedly biblical view, according to which God is passible. The author argues that this standard view misrepresents the tradition. For the fathers, the attribute of divine impassibility functioned in a restricted sense as an apophatic qualifier of divine emotions. Gavrilyuk construes the development of patristic thought (...) as a series of dialectical turning points taken to safeguard the paradox of God’s voluntary and salvific suffering in the incarnation. (shrink)

This book examines 13th century views about time, particularly the views of Thomas Aquinas and his contemporaries in the middle of the century. As medieval thinkers considered time to be just another duration alongside the durations of aeviternity (the aevum) and eternity, the scope of the study covers all three durations, culminating in an examination of God’s relationship to time. Chapter 1 opens the discussion by examining some of the key language and terminology which 13th century thinkers used. Chapters 2-5 (...) examine the topological properties of time: the properties that determine its shape and structure. Chapter 6 investigates the metrical properties of time: the properties pertaining to time when it is considered as a measure. Chapter 7 looks at the criteria, factors, and language which 13th century thinkers typically took as entailing that a particular would be in time. Chapter 8 explores how 13th century thinkers discussed existence outside of time, particularly as it was applied to aeviternity and aeviternal beings. Chapter 9 examines the content of the medieval concept of eternity, and how these ideas are best rendered in contemporary language. Chapter 10 examines the specific question of how 13th century thinkers viewed God’s relationship to time. (shrink)

The thirty chapters work through various fundamental metaphysical issues, sometimes focusing more on scholastic thought, sometimes on the seventeenth century.

This collection highlights such issues as how the nature of time is relevant to the question of whether God is temporal and how God's other attributes are ...

I. THE TASK OF DOGMATICS As a theological discipline dogmatics is the scientific self- examination of the Christian Church with respect to the content of ...

In chapters 12-18 of "Against Proclus," Philoponus continues to do battle against Proclus' arguments for the beginninglessness and everlastingness of the ordered universe. In this final section there are three notable issues under discussion. The first concerns the composition of the heavens and its manner of movement. Philoponus argues against the Aristotelian thesis that there is a fifth heavenly body that has a natural circular motion. He concludes that even though the celestial region is composed of fire and the other (...) three elements, it can move in a circle by the agency of its soul, and that this circular motion is not compromised in any way by the innate natural motion of the fire. Chapter 16 contains an extended discussion of the will of God and His relation to particulars. Here Philoponus addresses issues that become central to medieval philosophical and theological discussions, including the unity, timelessness and indivisibility of God's will. Finally, throughout these seven chapters Philoponus is engaged in a detailed exegesis of Plato's Timaeus which aims to settle a number of familiar interpretive problems, notably how we should properly understand the pre-cosmic state of disorderly motion, and the statement that the visible cosmos is an image of the paradigm. Philoponus' exegetical concerns culminate in chapter 18 with an extensive discussion of Plato's attitude to poetry and myth. (shrink)

Four principles about Time have the consequence that God must be everlasting, and not timeless. These are 1) events occur over periods of time, never at instants, 2) Time has a metric if and only if there is a unified system of laws of nature, 3) The past is the realm of the causally unaffectible, the future of the causally affectible, 4) Some truths can only be known at certain periods. Yet God is not Time’s prisoner’, for the unwelcome features (...) of Time--the increase of unaffectible events, the cosmic clock’ ticking away--only occur if God so chooses. (shrink)

Many theists reject the notion that God’s eternity consists in his timelessness — i.e., in his lacking temporal extension and failing to possess properties at any times. Some of these “divine temporalists” hold that, for philosophical reasons, it is impossible to accept both the timelessness of God and the view that God knows what happens at different times and brings about events in time. 1 Many reject divine timelessness as a dubious import from Platonism with no biblical or theological warrant.2 (...) And some question the very intelligibility of the doctrine. (shrink)