Divine Motivation theory is a major contribution both to the philosophy of religion, particularly the philosophy of religious ethics, and to general ethical theory. It is demanding reading, because it is long and complex and about difficult issues. It is also rewarding, because it is suggestive and highly original, written and argued with philosophical intelligence and disciplined care, and rich in systematic connections and explanations of them.

Widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in contemporary philosophy of religion, this book by Linda Zagzebski is a major contribution to ethical theory and theological ethics. At the core of the book lies a form of virtue theory based on the emotions. Quite distinct from deontological, consequentialist and teleological virtue theories, this one has a particular theological, indeed Christian, foundation. The theory helps to resolve philosophical problems and puzzles of various kinds: the dispute between cognitivism and non-cognitivism in (...) moral psychology, the claims and counterclaims of realism and anti-realism in the metaphysics of value, and paradoxes of perfect goodness in natural theology, including the problem of evil. As with Zagzebski's previous Cambridge book Virtues of the Mind, this book will be sought out eagerly by a broad swathe of professionals and graduate students in philosophy and religious studies. (shrink)

In this paper I summarize two versions of a new form of ethical theory in which all basic moral terms are defined by direct reference to exemplars of goodness. I call the Christian form Divine Motivation Theory in a book by the same name (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and the more general form I call Exemplarist Virtue Theory (Gifford Lectures 2015) or Exemplarist Moral Theory (forthcoming 2017, Oxford University Press). In the Christian form the supreme exemplar is God. (...) In exemplarist virtue theory exemplars are superbly admirable persons or fictional characters, whose goodness is identified through the emotion of admiration rather than through the satisfaction of descriptive properties. In both versions of the theory the terms ‘good person’, ‘virtue’, ‘good life’, ‘admirable act’, and ‘right act’ are defined by the acts, motives, judgments, and attitudes of exemplary persons. (shrink)

Divine Motivation theory is an ethical theory with a theological foundation, attempting to explain the relation between religion and morality in the context of Christian theology with emphasizing on neo-Aristotelian and motivation-based ethics. This theory that is presented by Linda Zagzebski, provides a new form of virtue ethics that God's motives, especially that of love, are foundations of moral life and these motivational states are considered ontologically and explanatorily the basis for all moral properties and values. This (...) theory uses five steps to advance its destination. In the first step, this theory proves the personhood of God. In the second step, it argues that God has perfect virtues and motives. In the third step, it shows that God's motive in the Creation is motive of love that is the central and fundamental divine motive. In the fourth step, it discusses the doctrine of imitatio Dei and focuses on the problems of this doctrine. In the last step, it attempts to link this doctrine to the doctrine of the incarnation to resolve its problems. (shrink)

To support her divine motivation theory of the good, which seeks to ground ethics in motives and emphasize the attractiveness of morality over against the compulsion of morality, Linda Zagzebski has proposed an original account of obligations which grounds them in motives. I argue that her account renders obligations objectionably person-relative and that the most promising way to avoid my criticism is to embrace something quite close to a divine command theory of obligation. This requires her to (...) combine her desired emphasis on the imitation of God with a contrasting emphasis on submission to God. I conclude that her divine motivation theory of the good, if it is to have an adequate account of obligation, is dependent on a divine will or divine command theory of obligation. (shrink)

This is Warrior Yoga, New York Times bestselling author and retired Navy SEAL Commander Mark Divine's latest contribution to mental and physical achievement exercises started with 8 Weeks to SEALFIT and Unbeatable Mind. This is not your average yoga book. Using Coach Divine's signature integrated training curriculum, Warrior Yoga is an intense physical workout designed for both the nation's elite special ops soldiers, and the regular athlete with the heart and mind of a warrior. His tried and true (...) warrior sequences are designed to be simple and flexible. These short, powerful drills can be done from home or on the road to enhance existing workout regimens and cultivate new ones. The sequences are targeted and focused to adapt to any athlete's physical and mental capabilities including those rehabilitating from injuries and suffering from PTSD. Mark's decades of experience with amateur and professional athletes, active and aspiring Navy SEALS, and wounded warriors uniquely qualify him as an expert motivator and teacher. To be a SEALFITTM Yoga Warrior requires a harmonious balance between mental and physical toughness, strength, and agility. Mark's short digestible exercises will help any athlete hone their fitness routine to reach their fullest potential, combining the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of an unbeatable mind and body program. (shrink)

Physical activity, and likely the motivation for it, varies throughout the day. The aim of this investigation was to create a short assessment (CRAVE: Cravings for Rest and Volitional Energy Expenditure) to measure motivation states (wants, desires, urges) for physical activity and sedentary behaviors. Five studies were conducted to develop and evaluate the construct validity and reliability of the scale, with 1,035 participants completing the scale a total of 1,697 times. In Study 1, 402 university students completed a (...) questionnaire inquiring about the want or desire to perform behaviors “at the present moment (right now).” Items related to physical activity (e.g., “move my body”) and sedentary behaviors (e.g., “do nothing active”). An exploratory structural equation model (ESEM) revealed that 10 items should be retained, loading onto two factors (5 each for Move and Rest). In Study 2, an independent sample (n= 444) confirmed these results and found that Move and Rest desires were associated with stage-of-change for exercise behavior. In Study 3, 127 community-residing participants completed the CRAVE at 6-month intervals over two years- two times each session. Across-session interclass correlations (ICC) for Move (ICC = 0.72–0.95) and Rest (ICC = 0.69–0.88) were higher than when they were measured across 24-months (Move: ICC = 0.53; Rest: ICC = 0.49), indicating wants/desires have state-like qualities. In Study 4, a maximal treadmill test was completed by 21 university students. The CRAVE was completed immediately pre and post. Move desires decreased 26% and Rest increased 74%. Changes in Move and Rest desires were moderately associated with changes in perceived physical fatigue and energy. In Study 5, 41 university students sat quietly during a 50-min lecture. They completed the CRAVE at 3 time points. Move increased 19.6% and Rest decreased 16.7%. Small correlations were detected between move and both perceived energy and tiredness, but not calmness or tension. In conclusion, the CRAVE scale has good psychometric properties. These data also support tenets of the WANT model of motivation states for movement and rest (Stults-Kolehmainen et al., 2020a). Future studies need to explore how desires to move/rest relate to dynamic changes in physical activity and sedentarism. (shrink)

One task of moral theory is to answer the question, “Why be moral?” This paper describes a particular theistic theory’s account of moral motivation, which I call the Divine Friendship Theory. I illustrate its plausibility and promise by showing how well the theory does along two dimensions along which an answer to the why-be-moral question can fare better or worse, namely, being psychologically realistic and supporting recognizably moral actions and attitudes. of the answer to the why-be-moral question. Given (...) that the Divine Friendship Theory does well on each dimension, it deserves serious consideration. (shrink)

The paper discusses Heidegger's early notion of the “movedness of life” (Lebensbewegtheit) and its intimate connection with Aristotle's concept of movement (kinēsis). Heidegger's aim in the period of Being and Time was to “overcome” the Greek ideal of being as ousia – constant and complete presence and availability – by showing that the background for all meaningful presence is Dasein, the ecstatically temporal context of human being. Life as the event of finitude is characterized by an essential lack and incompleteness, (...) and the living present therefore gains meaning only in relation to a horizon of un-presence and un-availability. Whereas the “theological” culmination of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics finds the supreme fulfillment of human life in the semi-divine self-immanence and self-sufficiency of the bios theōrētikos, a radical Heideggerian interpretation of kinēsis may permit us to find in Aristotle the fundamental structures of mortal living as self-transcendent movement. (shrink)

This paper is the first of a two-part reexamination of causation in Descartes's physics. Some scholars ? including Gary Hatfield and Daniel Garber ? take Descartes to be a `partial' Occasionalist, who thinks that God alone is the cause of all natural motion. Contra this interpretation, I agree with literature that links Descartes to the Thomistic theory of divine concurrence. This paper surveys this literature, and argues that it has failed to provide an interpretation of Descartes's view that both (...) distinguishes his position from that of his later, Occasionalist followers and is consistent with his broader metaphysical commitments. I provide an analysis that tries to address these problems with earlier `Concurentist' readings of Descartes. On my analysis, Occasionalism entails that created substances do not have intrinsic active causal powers. As I read him, Descartes thinks that bodies have active causal powers that are partly grounded in their intrinsic natures. But I argue ? pace a recent account by Tad Schmaltz ? that Descartes also thinks that God immediately causes all motion in the created world. On the picture that emerges, Descartes's position is both continuous with, and a subtle departure from, the Thomisitic theory of divine concurrence. (shrink)

A number of factors are at work as they relate to divine guidance in the life of a Christian. Examples of odegeology – the neologism given to this dimension of practical theology – are discussed in this article around the scriptural topos of hindrance as a motivation in Paul’s guidance. Four examples are considered that are drawn from the book of Acts and from his own letters. The circumstances related to these hindrances are discussed, and relevant applications are (...) drawn from them. The article closes with a contemporary example of hindrance resulting from the coronavirus pandemic of 2019. It looks at lessons Christians are learning about the hindrances caused by this virus as they cope with restrictive stay-at-home orders. These are suggested as somewhat analogous to Paul’s two extended imprisonments. Contribution: This article is the first to explore systematically all the texts regarding hindrance as a motivation for guidance related to Paul in the book of Acts and his letters. Guidance in the Christian life remains an important dimension within Practical Theology, a theological discipline within the journal’s publishing tradition. (shrink)

Thanks largely to the work of Robert Adams and Philip Quinn, the second half of the twentieth century witnessed a resurgence of interest in divine command theory as a viable position in normative theory and meta-ethics. More recently, however, there has been some dissatisfaction with divine command theory even among those philosophers who claim that normative properties are grounded in God, and as a result alternative views have begun to emerge, most notably divine intention theory (Murphy, Quinn) (...) and divine motivation theory (Zagzebski). My goal here is to outline a distinct theory, divine desire theory, and suggest that, even if it is not clearly superior to these extant views, it is at least worthy of serious consideration.1 As far as this paper is concerned, the discussion will be limited just to the deontic status of actions (obligatory, permissible, forbidden), and so no attempt will be made to also account for axiological properties such as goodness or evil. In order to get oriented to the range of deontological views in this area, consider the following three rough characterizations. (shrink)

A number of factors are at work as they relate to divine guidance in the life of a Christian. Examples of odegeology – the neologism given to this dimension of practical theology – are discussed in this article around the scriptural topos of hindrance as a motivation in Paul’s guidance. Four examples are considered that are drawn from the book of Acts and from his own letters. The circumstances related to these hindrances are discussed, and relevant applications are (...) drawn from them. The article closes with a contemporary example of hindrance resulting from the coronavirus pandemic of 2019. It looks at lessons Christians are learning about the hindrances caused by this virus as they cope with restrictive stay-at-home orders. These are suggested as somewhat analogous to Paul’s two extended imprisonments. Contribution: This article is the first to explore systematically all the texts regarding hindrance as a motivation for guidance related to Paul in the book of Acts and his letters. Guidance in the Christian life remains an important dimension within Practical Theology, a theological discipline within the journal’s publishing tradition. (shrink)

Divine Action and Modern Science considers the relationship between the natural sciences and the concept of God acting in the world. Nicholas Saunders examines the Biblical motivations for asserting a continuing notion of divine action and identifies several different theological approaches to the problem. He considers their theoretical relationships with the laws of nature, indeterminism, and probabilistic causation. His book then embarks on a radical critique of current attempts to reconcile special divine action with quantum theory, chaos (...) theory and quantum chaos. As well as considering the implications of these problems for common interpretations of divine action, Saunders also surveys and codifies the many different theological, philosophical and scientific responses to divine action. The conclusion reached is that we are still far from a satisfactory account of how God might act in a manner that is consonant with modern science despite the copious recent scholarship in this area. (shrink)

Divine command metaethics is one of those theories according to which the nature of obligation is grounded in personal or social relationships. In this paper I first try to show how facts about human relationships can fill some of the role that facts of obligation aresupposed to play, specifically with regard to moral motivation and guilt. Then I note certain problems that arise for social theories of obligation, and argue that they can be dealt with more adequately by (...) an expansion of our vision of the social dimension of ethics to include God as the most important participant in our system of personal relationships. (shrink)

After briefly outlining the fine-tuning argument (FTA), I explain how it relies crucially on the claim that it is not improbable that God would design a fine-tuned universe. Against this premise stands the divine psychology objection: the contention that the probability that God would design a fine-tuned universe is inscrutable. I explore three strategies for meeting this objection: (i) denying that the FTA requires any claims about divine psychology in the first place, (ii) defining the motivation and (...) intention to design a fine-tuned universe into the theistic hypothesis, and (iii) providing arguments that the relevant probability is not terribly low. While I reject the first two, I conclude, in line with the third, that considerations about life's objective value establish that it is not absurdly improbable that God would design a fine-tuned universe, whether one regards the FTA as an inference merely to a cosmic designer, or to theism proper. Accordingly, the divine psychology objection fails. (shrink)

The recent work of logician Jc Beall marks a paradigm shift within the fields of analytic theology and philosophy of religion. Thanks to Beall’s work, the long held (and generally unquestioned) assumption that theology is governed by (or closed under) the classical account of logic, is no longer free for the assumption. More importantly, by dropping this unquestioned commitment to the classical account, Beall’s work has uncovered natural and well-motivated solutions to some of monotheistic theologies’ most difficult and longstanding problems. (...) That said, much of Beall’s work (and the work of others who have followed his lead) has been paraconsistent, utilizing glut-theoretic (contradictory) models to solve theologies problems. In this essay, my plan is to go paracomplete, with the aim of exploring a yet to be explored solution to the infamous foreknowledge and freedom problem. My solution finds its roots in the recent work Jc Beall and Aaron Cotnoir (‘God of the Gaps’, Analysis, 2017). Specifically, in this essay I will explore a gap-theoretic solution to the foreknowledge and freedom problem; one in which it is neither true nor false that God has foreknowledge. By utilizing Beall’s and Cotnoir’s model — which sees limit claims on God’s omni-properties as either just false or gappy — a natural and well-motivated solution to the foreknowledge and freedom problem emerges. Moreover, by utilizing the Beall-Cotnoir gap-theoretic model, not only is the foreknowledge and freedom problem circumvented, but an interesting and novel account of divine omniscience emerges. (shrink)

Apparently, relationships between God (if He exists) and His creatures would be very valuable. Appreciating this value raises the question of whether it can motivate a certain premise in John Schellenberg’s argument from divine hiddenness, a premise which claims, roughly, that if some capable, non-resistant subject fails to believe in God, then God does not exist. In this paper, I argue that the value of divine–creature relationships can justify this premise only if we have reason to believe that (...) the counterfactuals of freedom work out in certain ways. Unfortunately, we can’t acquire such a reason, at least not without relying on other successful arguments (if there are any) for the relevant premise of Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument. (shrink)

This paper presents and examines the argument from divine hiddenness as an evidential argument. It argues that a key thought that motivates the argument, namely, that it's surprising that God's existence is not more obvious, does not alone secure the conclusion that divine hiddenness is evidence against God. The evidential problem of divine hiddenness is illustrated using Bayesian models.

In our paper, ‘Escaping hell: divine motivation and the problem of hell’, we defended a theory of hell that we called ‘escapism’. We argued that given God’s just and loving character it would be most rational for God to maintain an open door policy to those who are in hell, allowing them an unlimited number of chances to be reconciled with God and enjoy communion with God. In this paper we reply to two recent objections to our original (...) paper. The first is an argument from religious luck offered by Rusty Jones. The second is an argument from Kyle Swan that alleges that our commitments about the nature of reasons for action still leaves escapism vulnerable to an objection we labeled the ‘Job objection’ in our original paper. In this paper we argue that escapism has the resources built into it needed to withstand the objections from Jones and Swan. (shrink)

Theologians and philosophers have argued against an interventionist view of divine action for centuries. Although God could intervene in the natural order, they believe that God does not and will not. This chapter first considers the arguments against the traditional, interventionist view of divine action. There are five main reasons why divine intervention has come under fire in recent decades: (i) an incompetent god; (ii) a capricious or inconsistent god; (iii) the problem of evil; (iv) the god (...) of the gaps; and (v) conflicts with science. The chapter then presents a brief discussion of the laws of nature, some specific noninterventionist models, and an assessment of the most popular such model based on quantum mechanics. It ends with a reexamination of the motives for noninterventionism and a new way to understand what the fight is about. (shrink)

The principle of alternate possibilities says that you are morally praiseworthy or blameworthy for something you do only if you could have done otherwise. Frankfurt examples are putative counterexamples to PAP. These examples feature a failsafe mechanism that ensures that some agent cannot refrain from doing what she does without intervening in how she conducts herself, thereby supposedly sustaining the upshot that she is responsible for her behavior despite not being able to do otherwise. I introduce a Frankfurt example in (...) which the agent who could not have done otherwise is God. Paying attention to the freedom requirements of moral obligation, the example is commissioned, first, to assess whether various statesof affairs that are unavoidable for God can be obligatory for God and for whichGod can be praiseworthy. The example is, next, used to unearth problems with conventional Frankfurt examples that feature human agents. I argue that conceptual connections between responsibility and obligation cast suspicion on these examples. Pertinent lessons that the divine Frankfurt example helps to reveal motivate the view that divine foreknowledge and determinism, assuming that both preclude freedom to do otherwise, may well imperil obligation and responsibility. (shrink)

This article investigates how Plato thinks we secure necessary motivational conditions for inquiry. After presenting a typology of zetetic breakdowns in the dialogues, I identify norms of inquiry Plato believes all successful inquirers must satisfy. Satisfying these norms requires trust that philosophy will not harm but benefit inquirers overall. This trust cannot be secured by protreptic argument. Instead, it requires divine intervention—an extra-rational foundation for rational inquiry.

This book is about right thinking and right behavior in the light of the Highest Divine Wisdom that permeates the hearts of all living beings. Because there is so much of suffering in the world due to wrong ideas, wrong philosophies, wrong and bad religions that teach violence in the name of some Holy Power, it has been an absolute order to the author from the Highest Wisdom that lives in the hearts of all people to publish this book (...) for the benefit of entire mankind. (shrink)

In a recent article (Kraay 2013), I argued that some prominent responses to two important arguments for atheism invoke divine satisficing – and that the coherence and propriety of this notion have not been established. Chris Tucker (2016) agrees with my evaluation of divine satisficing, but disagrees with my exegesis of these responses. He argues that they should be understood as invoking motivated submaximization instead. After reviewing the dialectical situation to date, I assess whether motivated submaximization can be (...) deployed in such a way as to defeat these argument for atheism. I argue that it’s far from clear that it can. (shrink)

In our paper, ‘Escaping hell: divine motivation and the problem of hell’, we defended a theory of hell that we called ‘escapism’. We argued that, given God's just and loving character, it would be most rational for Him to maintain an open-door policy to those who are in hell, allowing them an unlimited number of chances to be reconciled with God and enjoy communion with Him. In this paper we reply to two recent objections to our original paper. (...) The first is an argument from religious luck offered by Russell Jones. The second is an argument from Kyle Swan that alleges that our commitments about the nature of reasons for action still leaves escapism vulnerable to an objection we labelled the ‘Job objection’ in our original paper. In this paper we argue that escapism has the resources built into it needed to withstand the objections from Jones and Swan. (shrink)

This paper presents a feminist intervention into debates concerning the relation between human subjects and a divine ideal. I turn to what Irigarayan feminists challenge as a masculine conception of ‘the God’s eye view’ of reality. This ideal functions not only in philosophy of religion, but in ethics, politics, epistemology and philosophy of science: it is given various names from ‘the competent judge’ to the ‘the ideal observer’ (IO) whose view is either from nowhere or everywhere. The question is (...) whether, as Taliaferro contends, my own philosophical argument inevitably appeals to the impartiality and omni-attributes of the IO. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

This essay argues that the motifs of divine vengeance present in the Histories reflect a conscious, considered theory of divine action. This theory is defined by Herodotus’ empirical methodology and his lack of poetic revelation or other claimed insight into the nature and motivations of divinity. For Herodotus, divinity possesses a basically regulatory role in the cosmos, ensuring that history follows certain consistent patterns. One such pattern is vengeance, by which a large-scale balance of reciprocity is maintained in (...) human events through human and divine acts of repayment. This theory underlies Herodotus’ historical project, reinforcing his general skepticism about human knowledge and power and making possible his universalizing approach to historical narrative. (shrink)

The question of the transcendent, that which operates above and beyond the material stuff of the world, remains an enduring one for feminism, bound up as it is with the foundations of feminism's corporeal politics and the definition of its political subject. With the specificity of the situated and meaningful body grounding feminist politics, the universal and neutral status of the speaking subject has been diagnosed as masculine, and unable to properly account for sexed differences. On this basis, political community, (...) collectivity forged along the lines of a common identity, is considered important in the realization of feminist political goals, yet is also problematic in view of its reliance upon a universal category of identity through which to motivate for political change. Acknowledging these tensions, this paper revisits Luce Irigaray's essay “Divine Women” to suggest that in her rethinking of the divine as a shared horizon through which women can potentially achieve autonomy, the nature of the transcendent, the universal, and the identity of the feminine are also reconfigured in surprising ways. In a specific address to the dilemma of political community, Irigaray makes available a notion of the divine that is already differently inhabited. (shrink)

This article sets out a formal procedure for determining the probability that God would do a specified action, using our moral knowledge and understanding God as a perfect being. To motivate developing the procedure I show how natural theology – design arguments, the problems of evil and divine hiddenness, and the treatment of miracles and religious experiences as evidence for claims about God – routinely appeals to judgments involving these probabilities. To set out the procedure, I describe a decision-theoretic (...) model for practical reasoning which is deontological so as to appeal to theists, but is designed not to presuppose any substantive moral commitments, and to accommodate normative and non-normative uncertainty. Then I explain how judgments about what we probably ought to do can be transformed into judgments about what God would probably do. Then I show the usefulness of the procedure by describing how it can help structure discussions in natural theology and a-theology, and how it offers an attractive alternative to ‘skeptical theism’. (shrink)

Introduction -- Part I. The way of the world I: truth -- Introductory -- Truth in the state of nature -- Socialized truth -- Experts and authorities -- Part II. The way of the world II: ethics -- Introductory -- Application -- Motivation -- Transformation -- Teleology -- Part III. Beyond the way of the world: worth -- Dissolving the question -- Dismissing the question -- Worth as attached to specific activities -- Worth as attached to general features of (...) life -- Kantian accounts of worth -- Secular versus religious visions of worth -- Part IV. Divine teaching -- Models of faith: trust, orientation, receptivity -- Revelation -- Aspects of revelation I: moral teaching -- Aspects of revelation II: beauty -- Aspects of revelation III: a path -- Receiving revelation -- Multiple revelations -- Part V. Divine teaching and the way of the world -- Truth again -- Morality again -- Politics -- Epilogue -- Appendix I: Proofs of God -- Appendix II: Maimonides on the evidence for revelation -- Appendix III : Kant on art and natural beauty. (shrink)

I offer a series of axiomatic formalizations of Divine Command Theory motivated by certain methodological considerations. Given these considerations, I present what I take to be the best axiomatization of Divine Command Theory, an axiomatization which requires a non-standardsemantics for quantified modal logic.

This article considers Aquinas' doctrine of predestination as an eternal reality in God in light of its temporal realization in time by the incarnation of the eternal Son. In particular, Aquinas' repeated recourse to the ratio of the divine goodness as the motive of predestination is documented in conjunction with his teaching on the fittingness of the incarnation. In this light, the relation of the natural sonship of Christ to the grace of adoption is developed by Aquinas as the (...) temporal realization of the eternal reality of predestination in God. (shrink)

In this article, I defend a version of ontological pluralism, specifically with an eye toward laying metaphysical groundwork for an account of divine naming inspired by Avicenna. I try to show (1) that Avicenna’s pluralism is well-motivated as a metaphysical thesis and (2) that it offers substantive philosophical support for a correlatively pluralist approach to divine naming. My argument proceeds by identifying two influential objections to ontological pluralism, and then offering replies to these objections with the help of (...) Avicenna. The first objection pertains to pluralism as a position in general metaphysics, whereas the second pertains to pluralism as a position in theological epistemology or divine naming. To the extent that these replies are successful, I argue that Avicennian pluralism is compelling on both counts as a philosophical position. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer a sympathetic reading of Berkeley’s often maligned account of human agency. The first section briefly revisits three options concerning the relationship between human and divine agency available to theistically minded philosophers in the medieval and early modern eras. The second argues that, of those three views, only the position of concurrentism is consistent with Berkeley’s texts. The third section explores Berkeley’s reasons for adopting concurrentism by highlighting three motivating considerations drawn from his larger philosophical (...) system. Finally, the fourth section attempts to flesh out Berkeley’s understanding of human activity by looking at how we might understand his claim that “we move our legs ourselves” in light of his commitments to idealism and concurrentism. (shrink)

This dissertation attempts to reconcile the apparent inconsistency between a strong view of divine sovereignty and human moral responsibility. God's absolute sovereignty over his creatures entails that human beings cannot do otherwise than they do. If so, then it would seem to follow that human beings cannot be held morally responsible for their actions. The notion that God has Middle Knowledge is often defended as a way out of this apparent inconsistency. It is argued, however, that counterfactuals of freedom (...) have no truth value. Thus, it is admitted that God's sovereignty is not compatible with human beings having indeterministic freedom. Nevertheless, two considerations motivate an attempt to find a plausible compatibilist theory of moral responsibility. First, a strong case can be made that moral responsibility does not require alternative possibilities. Second, it is unlikely that indeterminism can ground moral responsibility due to the arbitrariness of indeterministic actions. Building on the work of Susan Wolf, John Martin Fischer, and Eleonore Stump, a compatibilist theory of moral responsibility is offered based on a teleological view of human agency. If an agent has a will that is designed to pursue the good as the intellect represents it, and her will is not directly manipulated, then she is morally responsible for her actions as long as her intellect is functioning properly, she knows the difference between right and wrong, and she has values that developed naturally through cognitive interaction with the world. This "Teleological Compatibilism" is immune from the standard objections raised against other compatibilist theories of responsibility. Given the plausibility of this compatibilist account, divine sovereignty and human responsibility can be shown to be consistent. (shrink)

We argue there is a deep conflict in Paul Moser’s work on divine hiddenness. Moser’s treatment of DH adopts a thesis we call SEEK: DH often results from failing to seek God on His terms. One way in which people err, according to Moser, is by trusting arguments of traditional natural theology to lead to filial knowledge of God. We argue that Moser’s SEEK thesis commits him to the counterfactual ACCESS: had the atheist sought after God in harmony with (...) how God reveals himself, she would have had access to filial knowledge of God. By failing to incorporate arguments or propositional evidence for God’s existence, Moser’s account leaves the doubting seeker without any evidential reason to think that either SEEK or ACCESS is true. Without this rational motivation in place, the doubting seeker is unlikely to seek after God in the way ACCESS describes. We argue that natural theology provides an evidential epistemic aid to motivate persons to seek God the way ACCESS describes. Thus, Moser is mistaken. Such arguments can be evidentially helpful in coming to know God. In conclusion, we explain how our reply naturally fits how we form and maintain trusting interpersonal relationships with others. (shrink)

In the present study we will direct our attention to the particular instances in which God appears as the subject of the verb נחם in the Pentateuch, where the context describes the reaction of ‘regretting’ or ‘repenting’ over a previous decision. In addition, in order to find out whether the Aramaic translators were consistent when trying to avoid anthropomorphisms, we will look at several of the occurrences of the verb in situations where it appears with a human, not a (...) class='Hi'>divine subject. This comparative approach will allow us to locate the different dimensions of the semantic field in which a given verb functions. Hopefully the wider the picture of this field, the better the chances are that we will understand the motivations and beliefs that informed the particular choices the translators made. (shrink)

J. L. Schellenberg's hiddenness argument is one of the key contemporary justifications for atheism and has prompted numerous responses from those defending the plausibility of belief in God. I will outline a recent counterargument from Michael C. Rea, who claims that relationships with God are far more widely available than Schellenberg assumes. However, I will suggest that it invites a response from proponents of the hiddenness argument because it leaves some nonbelievers unaccounted for. I will rectify this by suggesting that (...) a model of panentheism in which God is embodied in the cosmos allows all, including all nonbelievers, to have a relationship with God. I will then claim that semantic externalism and externalism about beliefs can enable nonbelievers to get to know this God. I will then challenge the hiddenness argument by suggesting that these relationships can accommodate the key motivations behind Schellenberg's insistence on personal relationships without requiring subjects to recognize that they are in a relationship with God. (shrink)

E.J.Lowe was a prominent and theistically–inclined philosopher who developed and defended a four–category ontology with roots in Aristotle’s Categories. But Lowe engaged in little philosophical theology and said even less about how a divine being might fit into his considered ontology. This paper explores ways in which the reality of a divine being might be squared with Lowe’s ontology. I motivate the exploration with a puzzle that suggests Lowe must reject either divine aseity or the traditional view (...) that God is a substance. After showing that the puzzle cannot be overcome by rejecting one of its premises, I consider ways in which Lowe might try to reject the puzzle wholesale. I argue that the best way to reject the puzzle is to countenance a fifth fundamental category, the category of supernatural substance. (shrink)