In this article, I explain and critique J. L. Schellenberg's atheological argument from horrors. I raise an epistemic objection, arguing that no one could be justified in believing its conclusion on the basis of its premises. Then I adumbrate a notion of the divine which is different in various ways from the God of classical theism and argue that Schellenberg's argument makes no trouble for belief in the existence of God so construed.

Theists in general and Christians in particular have good grounds for affirming divine action in relation to twenty-first-century science. Although humans cannot perceive with their five senses the causation—both divine and creaturely—at work in our world, they have reasons to believe God acts as an efficient, but never sufficient, cause in creation. The essential kenosis option I offer overcomes liabilities in other kenosis proposals, while accounting for a God who acts personally, consistently, persuasively, and yet in diversely efficacious (...) ways. We can reasonably infer that the love, beauty, and truth expressed in creation derive from divine and creaturely causation. (shrink)

This chapter begins by highlighting the role of necessary emanation in allowing for goodness to be diffused without involving anything contingent or external. It then argues that, while Timothy O’Connor’s position avoids modal collapse, it may imply divine coercion. O’Connor suggests that God, in order to properly manifest God’s goodness, must create creatures capable of divine union and give them everything required to make their enjoyment as perfect and infinite as it can be. This view is in (...) danger of making God’s salvific acts required, rather than gratuitous. The difficulty is not unique to O’Connor. Any position on which created things are capable of sharing in infinite goodness faces this tension. Such views can imply both that God must create a universe containing creatures capable of infinite enjoyment and that, within such a universe, the return of all things to God must be as complete, infinite, and encompassing as possible. (shrink)

The Christian and Islamic doctrine of the VIRGIN BIRTH claim God asexually impregnated the Virgin Mary with Jesus, Mary’s impregnation was fully consensual (VIRGIN CONSENT), and God never acts immorally (DIVINE GOODNESS). First, I show that God’s actions and Mary’s background beliefs undermine her consent by virtue of coercive incentives, Mary’s comparative powerlessness, and the generation of moral conflicts. Second, I show that God’s nondisclosure of certain reasonably relevant facts undermines Mary’s informed consent. Third, I show that a recent (...) attempt by Jack Mulder to rescue VIRGIN CONSENT fails. As DIVINE GOODNESS and VIRGIN CONSENT are more central to orthodoxy, Christians and Muslims have powerful reason to reject VIRGIN BIRTH. (shrink)

A fundamental tenet of the process philosophy founded by alfred north whitehead and charles hartshorne is that god's causal agency in the world is solely "persuasive," in contradistinction to much of traditional christian theism which portrays a more "coercive" god. The article, However, Seeks to show that hartshorne's God would appear to be somewhat coercive, E.G., In the imposition of the natural laws which are the limits to creaturely freedom and in the "luring" of creaturely actualizations of novel possibilities within (...) those limits. Divine coercion seems to be both a fact and a necessity in hartshorne's metaphysics, Despite his explicit denials. (shrink)

The Qur’an, a divine book, is a source whose authority is indisputable in terms of being a source of knowledge for Muslims and setting the framework of “speaking” about God and also allowing for the determination of what is moral. The Qur’an’s authority derives from both God Himself and the intra-textual consistency. Reasonal and philosophical justification of such values as freedom, creation, reason, wisdom, endeavor, reliability, and particularly unity of God have been dwelled upon in the present article. At (...) the same time, the visible effects of the aforementioned concepts, which are of great significance in themselves, in the external world, have been examined with their notional immanence and with the exemplarity of the Prophet. It is emphasized that absolute determinism, moral nihilism, and other materialistic views that accept the eternal existence of matter with the Creator lead to a worldview that suspends the freedom of choice and, in particular, the freedom of choosing a religion for humans. As Mu‘tazilah rightly argued in this regard, the essential condition of attaching value to an occurrence is that it must take place in an environment of freedom. The present article signalizes the way to achieve the theory, which we have named as Kalam’s Theory of Freedom, by drawing attention to the existence of some values that can also be reached through sole reason and rationalism intrinsic to the kalam discipline. Ultimately, it illuminates the path where the multicultural world can be a home for all of us without coercion and discrimination. Actions expected to attain their purposes and rationalism considering the possible outcomes of actions, especially pluralist and libertarian education processes, do not allow for ‘a single-valued world’ and nihilism. Qur’an’s warning about chaos is explicit for societies losing their religious, rational, and moral values. (shrink)

Whitehead’s position regarding God’s power is rather unique in the philosophical and theological landscape. Whitehead rejects divine omnipotence (unlike Aquinas), yet he claims (unlike Hans Jonas) that God’s persuasive power is required for everything to exist and occur. This intriguing position is the subject of this article. The article starts with an exploration of Aquinas’s reasoning toward God’s omnipotence. This will be followed by a close examination of Whitehead's own position, starting with an introduction to his philosophy of organism (...) and its two-sided concept of God. Thereupon, an analysis of Whitehead’s idiosyncratic view on God’s agency will show that, according to this conception, God and the world depend upon each other, and that God’s agency is a noncoercive but persuasive power. The difference between coercion and persuasion will be explained as well as the reason why God, according to Whitehead’s conception, cannot possibly coerce. Finally, a discussion of the issue of divine almightiness will allow for a reinterpretation of divine almightiness from a Whiteheadian perspective, which will show how, despite Whitehead’s rejection of God’s omnipotence, his concept retains essential elements of God as pantokrator (and thus markedly differs from Hans Jonas's concept). (shrink)

This book explores the role of divine severity in the character and wisdom of God, and the flux and difficulties of human life in relation to divine salvation. Much has been written on problems of evil, but the matter of divine severity has received relatively little attention. Paul K. Moser discusses the function of philosophy, evidence and miracles in approaching God. He argues that if God's aim is to extend without coercion His lasting life to humans, (...) then commitment to that goal could manifest itself in making human life severe, for the sake of encouraging humans to enter into that cooperative good life. In this scenario, divine agapē is conferred as free gift, but the human reception of it includes stress and struggle in the face of conflicting powers and priorities. Moser's work will be of great interest to students of the philosophy of religion, and theology. (shrink)

Themes of mastery, domination and power are familiar to any scholar of modern technology. Science is commonly cast as enabling the technological control over both the natural and physical worlds. Indeed, Francis Bacon famously equated scientific knowledge with power itself—stating that ‘knowledge itself is a power’. Bacon’s now ubiquitous phrase—commonly repeated as the banal ‘knowledge is power’—was an attempt to combat three heresies in scriptural interpretation by asserting the conjunction between biblical knowledge and divine power. Opening his critique of (...) the heresies he states: ‘You err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God’. In this sense the equation made between knowledge and power is of cosmic significance for Bacon in that knowledge is fundamentally associated with divine power. This image of scientific knowledge, method and rationality is deeply seductive. In this Baconian mode scientific method is irreducibly associated with human mastery over natural systems and the material world. In this image science and technology are defined as a kind of power over the physical world—the power of knowledge, method and the logos over nature, myth and irrationality. In its original Latin sense—ipsa scientia potestas est—the word that translates in English as simply power is a in fact a specific type of power. Potestas is defined as ‘power over’—with particular resonances with political and juridical traditions in Roman law. That is, knowledge is equated not simply with personal capacity. Rather, knowledge produces the power of mastery, domination and coercion... (shrink)

Accessible to students with no background in the subject, A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will provides an extensive and up-to-date overview of all the latest views on this central problem of philosophy. Opening with a concise introduction to the history of the problem of free will--and its place in the history of philosophy--the book then turns to contemporary debates and theories about free will, determinism, and related subjects like moral responsibility, coercion, compulsion, autonomy, agency, rationality, freedom, and more. Classical (...) compatibilist and new compatibilist theories of free will are considered along with the latest incompatibilist or libertarian theories and the most recent skeptical challenges to free will. Separate chapters are devoted to the relation of free will to moral responsibility and ethics; to modern science; and to religious questions about predestination, divine foreknowledge, and human freedom. Numerous down-to-earth examples and challenging thought experiments enliven the text. The book is an ideal addition to introduction to philosophy, metaphysics, and free will courses. (shrink)

Atheist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Kurt Baier, though from different philosophical traditions, shared a common concern about the traditional Judeo-Christian-Muslim doctrine that human beings are the creations of a Supreme Being. For Sartre, in “Existentialism is a Humanism” (1946), a God who designed us would thereby detract from our freedom and dignity. For Baier, in “The Meaning of Life” (1957), the idea that God designs us to serve his own purposes was deeply offensive in treating us as artifacts, domestic animals, (...) or slaves. Indeed, Baier said explicitly what was implicit in Sartre: that the divine creation of humans as would violate Immanuel Kant’s respect for persons principle. But this Kantian objection is badly flawed in ignoring the crucial role of human free will in traditional Abrahamic theism. Still, if we focus not on the divine-creation doctrine but on the doctrine of eternal torment for non-worshippers of God, then traditional Abrahamic theism does arguably undermine human freedom and dignity. For the threat of eternal torment is extraordinarily coercive. Keywords: theism, artifacts, free will, eternal torment, coercion. (shrink)

The recent studies on the relations between humanism or humanists and jurisprudence convince that Reneaissance, especially in XVIth century, when the national states began to raise, belonged to the periods of increased interest in the issue of law. Although Erasmus was not a layer, nor he introduced in any of his works a complete theory of law, he maintained close relations with many leading theoreticians of the law and jurists and sometimes spoke in the legal discussions of his age. Among (...) hist most important works concerning the matter of law were: Institutio principis Christiani, Ratio seu Methodus verae theologiae, Christiani matrimonii institutio, De interdicto esu carnium and Ecclesiastes. In the paper I’m going to concentrate on this latter work, in which Erasmus discusses the significance of preaching, preacher and widely understood Christian rhetoric. In the Ecclesiastes Erasmus touches the law subject with the special emphasis on historical character of law and relations between the divine law, the law of Christ and the law of Nature. After a short discussion about his understaning of law I will concentrate on the essential differentiation between the letter of law and the spirit of law, and I will point at proposed by Erasmus ways of introduction of law into human life. Erasmus, on the one hand, escaped a rigidity and abstraction of law and, on the other, he neutralised an aspect of the coercion of law. In his solution Erasmus appreciated the political dimension of preaching and acknowledged preacher as a more important guide of the people, than ruler. I’m going to interpret the Erasmian concept of preaching as an rhetorical mean of introduction of law in analogical way to “introduction” proposed by Plato in his Nomoi. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 584-585 [Access article in PDF] Phillip Cary. Augustine's Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xvii + 214. Cloth, $45.00. In a gloss on the well-known gospel text, G. K. Chesterton noted that it is precisely because salt is unlike the foods it preserves that it is able to do (...) its distinctive work of preservation. Likewise, according to the thesis of this book, it is precisely because Augustine of Hippo invented his distinctive approach to interiority that he has done so much to preserve for the Western tradition the Platonic conception of the soul. Yet Augustine's contribution to the philosophy of the inner self is not simply one of inventio in the classical sense of a discovery of the Platonic self, it is also an innovation pointing philosophy in a new direction.Using a series of provocative images, Phillip Cary outlines the history of the idea of the private inner self in a way that highlights Augustine's distinctive contribution. He begins with Plato's Allegory of the Cave wherein the soul or self is an eye that has escaped the lower darkness to gaze upward away from itself toward the sun achieving intellectual vision. This idea is developed by Plotinus, for whom the soul is like a sphere revolving around the inner source of intelligibility at the center of things. This soul can look out toward the darkness or inward toward the intelligible light. In a further development, Augustine pictures the self as an inner palace with large courtyards open to the intelligible light of the sun such that the eye of the soul must turn inward and then upward to be enlightened. The final modern development is represented by Locke's picture of the self as a dark room where nothing but images are projected within through windows out of which the self cannot see, the intelligible light of the sun being kept out. Introducing the notion of the private inner life, Augustine is the forerunner of modern philosophy and all that has followed from the Cartesian turn. Yet Augustine is also a Platonist seeking the source of intelligibility that enlightens the inner self taking it beyond itself. This dual thesis is defended by Cary through a study of Augustine's place in the Platonic tradition of inner divinity. The task takes up the [End Page 584] first half of the book and builds on the well-known studies of Augustine's Platonism by J. J. O'Meara, R. J. O'Connell, and others. The second part of the book is devoted to Augustine's innovations of privacy and the inward-upward turn and yields some surprising discoveries that will interest the historian of philosophy.One surprise concerns Augustine's expressionist semiotics according to which signs are outward expressions of what is within. As a Platonist, however, Augustine also holds that signs signify intelligible things that nonetheless fail to be made truly intelligible by signs. The knower, then, does not grasp the intelligible thing from its being signified by the sign, but grasps the significance of a sign by knowing the intelligible thing it signifies. Thus, according to the De Doctrina Christiana, the correct interpreter of scripture is the one who already knows the spiritual things the words of scripture signify and, therefore, is not a slave to a literal interpretation of these words.Another surprise is Augustine's notion of grace as a sort of Platonic eros. Operating by attraction rather than coercion, grace is as much directed at the reason as the will. Thus, the discussions of grace as inward teaching in the anti-Pelagian works is a development of Christ, the inner teacher of the De Magistro, and Reason, the inner teacher of the Soliloquies.Yet another surprise concerns the traditional faith-reason problem. Rather than seeing faith and reason as contrasting modes of inner cognition of outward objects, Augustine associates faith with authority as external... (shrink)

"Peter Iver Kaufman is admirably and ideally qualified to undertake this project of reading More on politics in the light of Augustine on politics. In vigorous, well-paced prose, he tackles an important and original subject." —_Marcia L. Colish, Frederick B. Artz Professor of History, emerita, Oberlin College_ _“Incorrectly Political_ will attract readers not only because it is written with the author's characteristic flair and liveliness, but also because of his established capacity to bridge centuries of Western thought and history. Written (...) at the dawn of the new century, this book acquires deep resonance from the events unfolding around the world, circumstances to which Augustine’s and More's complex thoughts on political possibility still speak. If ever a study of such hoary figures from the Christian past deserved the label 'timely,' it is surely this one.” —_Kevin Madigan, Harvard University Divinity School_ Augustine in the fourth and fifth centuries and Thomas More in the sixteenth were familiar with the deceits and illusions that enabled even the most vile rulers to shore up their dignity and that gave repressive regimes an inviolability of sorts. Both men knew the politics of their times, both were involved in politics, and both were at one time politically ambitious. Augustine needed and made good use of government's powers of coercion and damage control in his struggle against the Donatists. The clear advantages of political protection and correction preoccupied More in his battle against Martin Luther. Both later changed their minds and believed, finally, the political imagination, based as it is on a desire for power, always and inevitably leads to devastation and suffering. Peter Iver Kaufman explains how and why we have failed to appreciate Augustine's and More's profound political pessimism, reintroducing readers to two of the Christian tradition's most enigmatic yet influential figures. Each had been disturbed by the reach of his own political ambitions—as by those of contemporaries. Each knew that government was useful—yet always deceitful. And each wrote a classic—widely read to this day, Augustine's _City of God_ and More's _Utopia,_as well as abundant correspondence and polemical tracts to explain why government on earth might be used, though never meaningfully improved. (shrink)

'Public reason' in Rawls's stipulated usage signifies propositions that can legitimately be used in deliberating on and deciding fundamental issues of political life and legislation because they are propositions which all citizens may reasonably be expected to endorse: their use is therefore fair (respects the moral principle of reciprocity) and preserves the public peace which is at risk from contests between comprehensive doctrines, contests exemplified by wars of religion. This attractive set of suggestions is ruined by irresoluable ambiguities, truncation of (...) reason's resources and of public discourse just when they are most needed, and incipient capitulation to some radical injustices. But public reason may nonetheless be an opportune phrase for conveying the gist of four permanently valid theses in the classical political thought that develops from Socrates/Plato to Aquinas and beyond. That tradition has been significantly modified by recognition that a human right to immunity of religious beliefs and acts from coercion extends – precisely by reason of the importance of finding and adhering to the truth about the divine source of reality and value – to mistaken as well as correct religious beliefs and practices. That immunity is subject to limitations necessary to preserve public order; likewise, a religion's legitimacy as a source of reasons for public actions is dependent on its willingness to foster genuine public discourse. Analogously, a political or legal philosophy's rational warrant is dependent on the compatibility of its theses with the worth of authentic discourse and the support they give to institutions, including the rule of law, which favour such discourse. Habermas's account of discourse ethics fails by overlooking some truths about discourse, truth and friendship that Plato made clear in Gorgias. And (the rule of) law, too, is most adequately understood as a product and articulation of public reason. (shrink)

Since the beginning of human history, there has been no society that did not have any religion. Man meets his need to believe, encoded in his nature by turning to God. God has not left humans alone in their journey on earth, and from time to time, He has intervened in the world through his prophets. The prophethood, which constitutes one of the main subjects of theology, is an important institution in God-human communication. The messengers chosen by God convey to (...) people the information that they received through revelation and offer teachings that will bring them to salvation. The idea of salvation by God when suffering or feeling helpless has driven people to the expectation of a savior. Nearly all religions except Shintoism have the awaited savior belief in the world. Accordingly, the savior will emerge in an environment of chaos where disasters are experienced, and a moral collapse is observed. The expected savior will drive people away from this turmoil, bring them happiness, well-being, and lead them to salvation. Although there is a savior belief in Judaism and Christianity, Muslims claim that the awaited savior in these religions is Muhammad. Muslim thinkers who believe that Muhammad was heralded in previous scripts, tried to find evidence on the subject from the Bible. One of the Islamic scholars who did researches for this purpose is Shamsuddin al-Samarqandi. Shamsuddin Mohammed b. Ashraf al-Husayni al-Samarqandi is an important Turkish-Islamic scholar who lived in Turkestan at the end of the 7th century and the first quarter of the 8th century. Samarqandi is a versatile scholar who produced important works in various fields such as philosophy, logic, mathematics, discussion, debate and astronomy. Shamsuddin al-Samarqandi is one of the eminent scholars who have written his name in the history of science and philosophy with his works. He adopted a critical and analytical style in almost every field, putting the science of logic at the center of his system. His constructive criticisms had an important function in understanding and interpreting the ideas of numerous thinkers, from Greek philosophers to Islamic philosophers and representatives of philosophical theology. In addition to all these, Samarqandi did not hesitate to criticize the Christian and Jewish belief systems, religions such as Sanawiyyah and Zoroastrianism, and the teachings of the naturalist philosophers regarding the relationship between God and the world in the light of rational and scriptural evidence. Samarqandi, who distinguished himself in rational sciences, also showed himself with his background in theology. Due to his exceptional intellectual interest, he analyzes some key concepts and divine codes related to the Bible, making original inferences about the loyalty of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Samarqandi interprets some passages of the Torah and the New Testament, which he considers as signs of Muhammad's prophethood, in the axis of language, logic and the rules of shariah, and concludes that Muhammad is the last prophet to be announced. The conceptual framework that he mostly focuses on in this regard contains Mount Paran, Paraklite, comparison with Moses, and the good news given to the Ishmaelites. Samarqandi makes inferences about the environment in which Muhammad appeared, his qualities, and his lineage, based on the aforementioned concepts. Samarqandi also responds to the criticisms raised by the Ahl al-Kitab about the principles, such as the abolition of other religious rules constituting the basis of Muhammad's legitimacy and establishment of Islam instead, and him being a universal prophet. An important privilege of Samarqandi is that he not only grounds his claims on a theoretical scale but also engages in debates with the leaders of the Ahl al-Kitab. Although Samarqandi exhibits a satisfactory analytical attitude in most of his claims, he displays a sophisticated approach based on the method of coercion (ilzām) in some of his claims. Although he adheres to the tradition of beshair al-nubuwwah in general, he gives a different perspective and strong reasoning to the same evidence within the tradition with the effect of his identity as a verifier (muhaqqik). (shrink)

The title of this book is particularly significant in that Dr. Rushdoony was able to identify the basic contradiction that pervades a secular society that rejects God's sovereignty by still needs law and order, justice, science, and meaning to life. Secular man wants to use the thinks of creation while denying their creator. As Dr. Rushdoony writes, 'there is no law, no society, no justice, no structure, no design, no meaning apart from God.' And so, modern man has become schizophrenic. (...) He wants to assert his autonomy while rejecting the divine order that gives meaning to life. To the humanist, the aim of living is something he calls the 'good life.' For the nihilist, it is violence and death. Dr. Rushdoony saw cultural schizophrenia as a split between thought and feeling, a withdrawal from the reality of God and a flight into fantasies of world government achieved through an unattainable unity. Utopians are undeniably schizophrenic. They want a heaven on earth, which can only be achieved by coercion and enslavement. But perhaps what they really want, as depraved human beings, is coercion and enslavement, and use utopian idealism to deceive and entrap the gullible. Nor is it by accident that the government schools now lavish so much time on death education, which has been marbleized throughout the curriculum. As Dr. Rushdoony writes: 'For man to turn his back on God, therefore, is to turn towards death.' And this is exactly what the government schools have done. Add to this, multiculturalism, transcendental meditation, sensitivity training, explicit sex education, drug education, evolution, behavioral psychology, humanism, whole language, and other such programs, and you get a curriculum that is so profoundly anti-Christian that one wonders how any Christian parent or minister can condone putting a Christian child in a government school from the forward by Samuel L. Blumenfeld. (shrink)

The question of whether individuals retain interests or can be harmed after death is highly contentious, particularly within the context of deceased organ retrieval, retention and use. This paper argues that posthumous interests and/or harms can and do exist in the Konkomba traditional setting through the concept of ancestorship, a reputational concept of immense cultural and existential significance in this setting. I adopt Joel Feinberg’s account of harms as a setback to interests. The paper argues that a socio-culturally sensitive regulatory (...) framework does not necessarily exclude the donation of human biomaterials for transplant and science research. Indeed, when customary values are explored with open-mindedness and sensitivity it may be shown that such donation can form part of the important customs of some communities in this jurisdiction. Accordingly, a context-appropriate governance framework could utilise the cultural value of ancestorship as an incentive to encourage organ donation in the Ghanaian traditional setting. (shrink)

No detailed description available for "Berkeley's American Sojourn".

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)

Introduction: divine violence and political fetishism -- The political theology of sovereignty -- In the maw of sovereignty -- Benjamin's dissipated eschatology -- Waiting for justice -- Forgiveness, judgment and sovereign decision -- The Hebrew republic -- Conclusion : the anarchist hypothesis.

Over the past 25 years, no religious institution in America has done more to explore the link between the environment and spirituality than the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Now, for the first time, a selection of the finest of the Cathedral's ecological sermons appears in a single volume.

This book advances a persuasive account of Christian belief organized around the theme of love while also employing love as a constraint on theological formulation. Throughout, Gary Chartier seeks to understand divine action in ways that make it possible to affirm divine love in the face of evil. The Analogy of Love offers a stimulating model for thinking about God and the world.

Historians of science and religion have given little attention to how historical‐critical scholarship influenced perceptions of the relationship between science and religion in the nineteenth century. However, the so‐called “cofounders” of the “conflict thesis,” the idea that science and religion are fundamentally and irrevocable at odds, were greatly affected by this literature. Indeed, in his two‐volume magnum opus, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896), Andrew D. White, in his longest and final chapter of his (...) masterpiece, traced the development of the “scientific interpretation” of the Bible. In this article, I argue that developments in biblical criticism had a direct impact on how White constructed his historical understanding of the relationship between science and religion. By examining more carefully how biblical criticism played a significant role in the thought of White and other alleged cofounders of the conflict thesis, this article hopes to relocate the origins, development, and meaning of the science–religion debate at the end of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Some versions of the doctrine of divine simplicity imply that God lacks really differentiated parts. I present a new argument against these views based on divine beauty. The argument proceeds as follows: God is beautiful. If God is beautiful, then this beauty arises from some structure. If God’s beauty arises from a structure, then God possesses really differentiated parts. If these premises are true, then divine simplicity is false. I argue for each of the argument’s premises and (...) defend it against objections, including an objection based on analogical predication, and an objection that supposes that God is simple while appearing complex. (shrink)

This paper criticizes one of the premises of Schellenberg’s atheistic argument from divine hiddenness. This premise, which can be considered as the foundation of his proposed argument, is based on a specific interpretation of divine love as eros. In this paper I first categorize several concepts of divine love under two main categories, eros and agape; I then answer some main objections to the ascription of eros to God; and in the last part I show that neither (...) on a reading of divine love as agape nor as eros can Schellenberg’s argument be construed as sound. My aim is to show that even if -- contra Nygren for example -- we accept that divine love can be interpreted as eros, Schellenberg’s argument still doesn’t work. (shrink)

Democracy and the Divine articulates a democracy that is based on the principle of giving oneself to another. For this project, the author highlights two traditions that rarely have been read side by side or considered seminal to the philosophical idea of democracy: nineteenth-century German romanticism and French postmodernism.

God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism is a defense of God's aseity and unique status as the Creator of all things apart from Himself in the face of the challenge posed by mathematical Platonism. After providing the biblical, theological, and philosophical basis for the traditional doctrine of divine aseity, William Lane Craig explains the challenge presented to that doctrine by the Indispensability Argument for Platonism, which postulates the existence of uncreated abstract objects. Craig provides (...) detailed examination of a wide range of responses to that argument, both realist and anti-realist, with a view toward assessing the most promising options for the theist. A synoptic work in analytic philosophy of religion, this groundbreaking volume engages discussions in philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and metaontology. (shrink)

Intentions, Blame, and Contractualism: A review of Tim Scanlon, Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame by Jussi Suikkanen.

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)

Gregory T. Doolan provides here the first detailed consideration of the divine ideas as causal principles. He examines Thomas Aquinas's philosophical doctrine of the divine ideas and convincingly argues that it is an essential element of his metaphysics. According to Thomas, the ideas in the mind of God are not only principles of his knowledge, but they are productive principles as well. In this role, God's ideas act as exemplars for things that he creates. As Doolan shows, this (...) theory of exemplarism is an integral part of Thomas's account of the existence and order of the created universe. It also accounts in part for the freedom of God's creative act. The volume begins with an introduction to Thomas's doctrine of exemplarism and then addresses his arguments for the existence of exemplar ideas within the mind of God. Having established the existence of divine ideas, Doolan considers how Thomas reconciles their multiplicity with God's simplicity. The work identifies the various things for which Thomas posits divine ideas. As Doolan is careful to show, Thomas does not consider all of these ideas to be exemplars because not all of them act as causal principles. After identifying the ideas that do act in this way, Doolan considers how such exemplars can be causes of natural things without compromising the causality of natural agents. The volume culminates with a consideration of the role that the divine ideas play within the structure of Thomas's theory of participation. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gregory T. Doolan, assistant professor of philosophy at The Catholic University of America, is a contributor to Wisdom's Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor of Lawrence Dewan, O.P., and Reassessing the Liberal State: Reading Maritain's Man and the State. This is his first book. (shrink)

Recently, there has been some discussion about the relationship between Kant's conception of right (the sphere of juridical rights and duties) and his moral theory (with the Categorical Imperative as its fundamental norm). In section 1, I briefly survey some recent contributions to this debate and distinguish between two different questions. First, does Kant's moral theory (as developed in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason ) imply , or validate, a Kantian conception of right (as developed in the (...) first part of the Metaphysics of Morals , the Doctrine of Right)? In other words, is the Categorical Imperative sufficient to show that the fundamental principles of right are normatively valid? Second, does Kant's conception of right presuppose his moral theory? In other words, is the Categorical Imperative necessary to show that the basic principles of right are normatively valid? In this paper, I will be primarily concerned with defending a negative answer to the first of these questions. In section 2, I will discuss Paul Guyer's attempt to vindicate a positive answer to the same question. In section 3, reasons will be given why any attempt to derive Kant's conception of right from the Categorical Imperative must fail because of the analytic connection between right and coercion. (shrink)

In this paper I interpret the intriguing but underexplored concept of divine success in the Nāṭyaśāstra. The Nāṭyaśāstra discusses two main types of success that a dramatic performance may achieve. Chapter 27 of the Nāṭyaśāstra is principally devoted to explicating these two types of success: mānuṣī siddhi and daivikī siddhi. Prima facie, one type of success is deemed "human" because its achievement seems to depend on human efforts: the better the effort the greater the chances of attaining human success. (...) The other type is called "divine" because its achievement does not seem to be fully in human control; it seems to emanate from some nonhuman sources or factors.... (shrink)

Normally, activity is regarded as discernible, but according to relativity theory whatever is discernible lies in the past of the discernible. Only the present subjective immediacy is properly active. Subjectivity is properly understood as present becoming; objectivity as past being. I propose that we extend the domain of subjective immediacy to include the future as well as the present. This future universal activity is pluralized in the present in terms of the many actualities coming into being. Subjectivity is the individualization (...) of becoming, and so can apply to the future as a whole as well as to particular present subjects. The future as divine grows out of Whitehead's revisions of traditional notions of omnipotence and omniscience. But he separates creativity from the God of Western theism. This separation can be overcome if God is future creativity individualized in its own realm, which is the source of the creativity within each of us. (shrink)

As the world's literary, religious, and philosophical traditions attest, deficiency in the world is a matter of perennial human concern. Ontologically speaking deficient existence is a problem that has occupied metaphysical thinking from Heraclitus to Heidegger. What is it to exist deficiently? ;This dissertation addresses the question, first, through a survey of answers given by six ancient philosophers. Parmenides describes deficient existence as changing multiplicity; Plato, as being in an inferior world; Plotinus, as mis-seeing; Augustine, as disorderedness; Gregory of Nyssa, (...) as "nothingification" &parl0;`h e ,xoud e&d12;nwsi v&parr0; ; Dionysius, as failed participation. The dissertation then gives a more systematic answer through close study of the metaphysics of John Scotus Eriugena , who builds on the foundation established by these thinkers. ;The Eriugenian cosmos is a "theophanic" one. To be is to be the showing or expression of God. What exists, then, is divine and good. Furthermore, all deficiencies, such as they are, must be characterized as privations or impoverishments. ;What can deficient existence be in such a world? Eriugena's first answer is that it is existence on an inferior level of reality. This dualistic view must be rejected, however, because it is not consistent with the fundamental metaphysical principles that reality is an ontological unity and every being is divine. ;Two better descriptions of deficient existence can be found in his metaphysics. First, to be deficiently is to see the world deficiently; that is, deficient existence is a misunderstanding of reality. Second, deficient existence is metaphysically incomplete existence. Being as a whole is an ontological work in progress, a creatio ex nihilo that is a creatio ex nihilo hic et illuc et ubique ---here, there, and everywhere. ;Such a creation depends in part on human choice and is subject to the destructive influences of non-being. But rather than a fall from some primordial perfection, creation is a movement towards perfection. Hence the existence that it constitutes is an existence in the theophanic world. Moreover, creation is theophanic to the extent that it does exist, even though, as deficient, it does not yet fully exist. (shrink)

Most analytic philosophers hold that if God exists, He exists with broad logical necessity. Richard Swinburne denies the distinction between narrow and broad logical necessity, and argues that if God exists, His existence is narrow-logically contingent. A defender of divine broad logical necessity could grant the latter claim. I argue, however, that not only is God's existence broad-logically necessary, but on a certain understanding of God's relation to modality, it comes out narrow-logically necessary. This piece argues against Swinburne's overall (...) account of modality and rebuts his argument for narrow-logical contingency. (shrink)

Divine command theories of metaethics are commonly rejected on the basis of the Euthyphro problem. In this paper, I argue that the Euthyphro can be raised for all forms of moral realism. I go on to argue that this does not matter as the Euthyphro is not really a problem after all. I then briefly outline some of the attractions of a divine command theory of metaethics. I suggest that given one of the major reasons for rejecting such (...) an analysis has been found to be unsound divine command theories deserve to be taken more seriously in contemporary metaethics. (shrink)