I propose and defend a model of the atonement, called “anastatic” because of the central role played by Christ’s resurrection. According to this model, union with Christ is achieved by means of expanding the divine act of resurrection to incorporate sinners, thereby granting them access to a new life free from sin. I provide a biblical defense and a Thomistic explication of the model, and close by considering how it might relate to other atonement models within a broader theory of (...) the atonement. (shrink)

The modal collapse argument states that the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity entails that God necessarily creates whatever he creates and also that all creatures necessarily perform whatever actions they perform. In response to these objections, many authors argue that God’s willing to create this precise world and God’s knowing everything about individual creatures are at least partially extrinsic or Cambridge properties (i.e., the truthmaker of the respective propositions is, in part, a fact about something contingent other than God). This (...) paper argues for a general view of action, in which such properties can turn out to be at least partially extrinsic. Section 1 explains why responding to the modal collapse argument requires that part of the truthmaker relating God to contingent facts be extrinsic to God, and that it is only in this part that contingency lies. Section 2 argues that this can be generally so in certain class of causal relations, where the agent remains intrinsically the same no matter the precise effect produced. Section 3 shows that free volition is at some level one of those relations, and section 4 offers some brief remarks about the difficulties that still remain in the case of knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, I formulate an alternative to the classical doctrine of divine simplicity. Simply stated, God’s nature is best understood as Holy Triune Love (HTL), and all attributes are best understood as aspects of HTL. This reformulation will allow us to affirm much of the content of classical simplicity without the actus-purus doctrine. This paper will proceed as follows. First, I will define CS and sketch its rationale in God's metaphysical ultimacy. Second, I will defend two critical objections from (...) the incarnation and divine knowledge I take to be decisive against CS. Third, I will sketch HTL in relation to the trinitarian processions and the attributes, showing how HTL best satisfies the doctrinal motivations for CS. Fourth, I will show how HTL responds to the challenges I’ve raised against CS. I will then conclude by answering five potential objections. (shrink)

Inspired by Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN), we develop an argument—the “Scriptural Argument Against Dogmatic Protestantism” (SAADP)—that Protestants who accept the doctrine of sola scriptura cannot reasonably hold that Catholic and Eastern churches are in doctrinal error. If sola scriptura is true and Catholic and Eastern Churches have fallen into error, it is improbable that any Protestant can reliably form true beliefs about controversial points of Christian doctrine, including sola scriptura or suggestions that Catholic and Eastern Christians are in (...) error. We evaluate potential responses to SADDP, considering how SAADP should affect ecumenical doctrinal debates. (shrink)

I argue that the creation and freely chosen salvation and everlasting bliss of even just one person is a greater good than any finite amount of evil and suffering. Since it is extremely likely (if not certain) that, out of all possible individuals that could exist, some (or at least one) would only be freely saved through the contemplation and experience of evil and suffering, then God would be justified in creating a world with evil and suffering to allow for (...) the salvation of such individuals, so long as no one else freely lost their salvation who otherwise would not have lost it because of the evil and suffering. Thus, the problem of evil dissipates, as a world with evil and suffering, even seemingly gratuitous evil and suffering, would be entirely expected given theism. (shrink)

Brian Leftow has argued in significant detail for a timeless conception of God. However, his work has been interacted with less than one might expect, especially given that some have contended that divine timelessness should be put to death and buried. Further, the work that has critically interacted with Leftow does a very poor job at discrediting it, or so I will contend. As we shall see, the main reason for this is either because what is central to Leftow’s view (...) is not affected by the objection, or because Leftow provides another way of getting his theory off the ground. Why, then, do so many objections miss the mark? I suspect it’s because many struggle to understand Leftow’s view and what is central to it. As such, one of the main goals of this paper will be to make Leftow’s account more accessible and to elucidate the main elements of the theory, whilst also providing responses to the main objections raised against his view. The overall result of this, I hope, will be a more fruitful examination of Leftow’s view in the future. (shrink)

The central focus of this article is to provide a new “Love Argument” for the necessary truth of the Latin “model” of the doctrine of the Trinity—termed “Latin Trinitarianism”—from an a priori standpoint. This new argument, called the Agápēic Argument, will be formulated in light of the metaphysical notions of a “trope,” introduced by D. C. Williams, and “multiple location,” posited by Antony Eagle, and the ethical concept of agápē, proposed by Alexander Pruss. Doing this will provide a specific argument (...) that provides strong grounds for affirming the necessary truth of the Trinity, without, however, being subject to the primary objections that have been often raised against the existing versions of the argument. (shrink)

A much-discussed objection to skeptical theism is that skeptical theism implies that divine testimony cannot provide us with knowledge. Here I argue that it is not skeptical theism that raises doubts about the trustworthiness of divine testimony; rather, the vast amount of inscrutable evil in our world together with God’s track record of deception is the source of the trouble. I draw on that insight to develop further my divine deception argument (Wielenberg 2014). The argument I will defend goes roughly (...) like this: There is a lot of inscrutable evil in the world and the Christian God has a track record of being deceptive about future events. Therefore, divine testimony regarding future events is not a source of knowledge that such events will occur. (shrink)

Molinists offer a tempting bargain: accept divine middle knowledge, and reap solutions to a number of philosophical/theological problems. The prime benefit we are meant to reap from middle knowledge is a solution to the problem of freedom and providence. I argue that they cannot deliver. Even if we make metaphysical and semantic assumptions that have generally been considered friendly to Molinism, Molinism is in danger of undermining divine providence altogether. This “collapse" persists despite fairly uncontroversial assumptions, and plagues the best (...) Molinist theories defended in the literature. (shrink)

This article constructively retrieves St. Anselm of Canterbury’s theory of retributive justice and provides a defense of what can be called the retributive model of hell. In the first part of this article, we develop the place of retributive punishment in Anselm’s thinking and discuss how and when retributive punishment is a good thing. In the second part, we apply Anselm’s thinking on retributive justice to the problem of hell and provide a defense of how hell, defined as a state (...) of receiving retributive, damnatory, and irreversible punishment, is good. We then address a series of objections. Despite some criticism that both Anselm and the retributive model of hell receive in the contemporary literature, Anselm’s account of retributive justice can make unique and constructive contributions to the contemporary discussion of hell; by retrieving and applying Anselm’s thought to the problem of hell, we intend to kill two birds with one stone. (shrink)

In the first half, I suggest that Kant’s conception of our moral life goes through a significant shift after 1793, with reverberations in his eschatology. The earlier account, based on the postulate of immortality, describes our moral life as an endless pursuit of the highest good, but all this changes in the later account, and I point out three possible reasons for this change of heart. In the second half, I explore how the considerations Kant brings up to argue for (...) his accounts can inform our process of formulating positions with respect to the afterlife. I argue that, in the absence of a convincing theoretical proof for or against the afterlife as well as apodictically certain knowledge of how demanding the moral law is, the Kantian strategy would be to ask which account of our moral life delivers the kind of contentment that can sustain our moral resolve. I also point out a way theists might be able to find contentment despite their moral failures by imagining God’s moral kenosis. (shrink)