Perfect being theism is the view that the perfect being exists and the property being-perfect is the property being-God. According to the strong analysis of perfection, a being is perfect just in case it exemplifies all perfections. On the other hand, the weak analysis of perfection claims that a being is perfect just in case it exemplifies the best possible combination of compatible perfections. Strong perfect being (...) theism accepts the former analysis while weak perfect being theism accepts the latter. In this paper, I argue that there are good reasons to reject both versions of perfect being theism. On the one hand, strong perfect being theism is false if there are incompatible perfections; I argue that there are. On the other hand, if either no comparison can be made between sets of perfections, or they are equally good, then there is no best possible set of perfections. I argue for the antecedent of this conditional statement, concluding that weak perfect being theism is false. In the absence of other analyses of perfection, I conclude that we have reason to reject perfect being theism. (shrink)

Yujin Nagasawa presents a new, stronger version of perfect being theism, the conception of God as the greatest possible being. Nagasawa argues that God should be understood, not as omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, but rather as a being that has the maximal consistent set of knowledge, power, and benevolence.

Yujin Nagasawa has recently, in a sense, demonstrated that God, the central subject of his perfect being theism (PBT), exists, via his maximal God approach. In this article, I shall explain that Nagasawa’s journey towards this conclusion is fraught and that the conclusion, while plausibly correct, is of limited significance given that Nagasawa’s perfect being theism is not a single hypothesis but a very broad catch-all hypothesis that includes concepts of God that most would (...) deny are worthy of the term. (shrink)

This paper employs tools and critiques from analytic feminist scholarship in order to show how particular values commonly on display in analytic theology have served both to marginalize certain voices from the realm of analytic theological debate and to reinforce a particular conception of the divine—one which, despite its historical roots, is not inevitable. I claim that a particular conception of what constitutes a “rational, objective, analytic thinker” often displays certain affinities with those infinite or maximal properties that analytic theologians (...) have taken to be most relevant or essential to their theological conceptions of the divine, and I explore what thinking differently about the former might mean for how we think about the latter and vice versa. (shrink)

According to Perfect Being Theism, God is the absolutely perfect (i.e., greatest possible) being. The notion of absolute perfection can be analyzed in different ways. On one interpretation, to be absolutely perfect requires the exemplification of all absolute perfections. On another interpretation, to be perfect requires the exemplification of the best possible combination of perfections. It seems that the latter analysis is better than the former, because it does not fall prey to the (...) problem of incompatible perfections, viz., that there (probably) are perfections that cannot be coexemplified. Here I argue that even if perfect being theists accept the latter analysis, the problem of incompatibility does not go away. I argue that perfections are (probably) incomparable: it is false that some perfection is better than, worse than, or equally good to another perfection. If so, then it is impossible or at least extremely difficult to say that among the combination of perfections there are, there is one that is best among them. I also argue that adopting the former analysis with some restrictions (as Mark Murphy does) leads to the same incompatibility and incomparability problems. (shrink)

The articles in the present collection deal with the religious dimension of the problem of free will. All of the papers also have implications for broader philosophical and theological issues, and will thus be of interest to a wide variety of scholars, both religious and secular. Together they provide a historical and contemporary overview of problems in the theology of freedom, together with recent work by some important philosophers in the field aimed at resolving those problems. The chapters are divided (...) into four sections. The first addresses central issues about the nature of free will and how free will relates to theological topics such as theological fatalism and the problem of evil. The second section focuses on historical debates about free will and theism, but with an eye toward how those historical discussions can be brought into discussion with contemporary debates. The third section aims to address and understand divine freedom, while the final section explores implications of the doctrine of divine omnicausality. (shrink)

This volume collects a set of papers that were presented at a conference on “Big Questions in Free Will,” held at the University of Saint Thomas in October of 2014. It is dedicated to its editor, who passed away shortly after completing the manuscript. I will briefly summarize each of the 11 chapters and then offer a few critical comments.

This thesis argues that theists can and should be expressivists about morality.

Anselmian theists claim (a) that there is a being than which none greater can be conceived; and (b) that it is knowable on purely—solely, entirely—a priori grounds that there is a being than which none greater can be conceived. In this paper, I argue that Anselmian Theism gains traction by conflating different interpretations of the key description ‘being than which no greater can be conceived’. In particular, I insist that it is very important to distinguish between (...) ideal excellence and maximal possible excellence. At the end of my paper, I illustrate the importance of this distinction by applying my discussion to the recent defence of Anselmian Theism in Nagasawa (Philos Q 58:577–591, 2008). (shrink)

I use Plotinus to present absolute divine simplicity as the consequence of principles about metaphysical and explanatory priority to which most theists are already committed. I employ Phil Corkum’s account of ontological independence as independent status to present a new interpretation of Plotinus on the dependence of everything on the One. On this reading, if something else (whether an internal part or something external) makes you what you are, then you are ontologically dependent on it. I show that this account (...) supports Plotinus’s claim that any entity with parts cannot be fully independent. In particular, I lay out Plotinus’s case for thinking that even a divine self-understanding intellect cannot be fully independent. I then argue that a weaker version of simplicity is not enough for the theist since priority monism meets the conditions of a moderate version of ontological independence just as well as a transcendent but complex ultimate being. (shrink)

Cosmological arguments for God typically have two stages. The first stage argues for a first cause or a necessary being, and the second stage argues from there to God. T. Ryan Byerly offers a simple, abductive argument for the second stage where the best explanation for why the being is found to have necessary existence is that it is a perfect being. The reasoning behind this argument is that universal generalizations explain observations of their instances; for (...) example, the universal generalization that all ravens are black explains why some particular raven is observed to be black. Similarly, the fact that a being has all perfections explains why we find the being to have necessary existence. I distinguish between two readings of Byerly’s proposed theistic explanation, and conclude that his explanation does not offer an advantage to the theist in either case. (shrink)

Classic perfect being theologians take ‘being perfect’ to be conceptually necessary and sufficient for being God. I argue that this claim is false because being perfect is not conceptually necessary for being God. I rest my case on a simple thought experiment inspired by an alternative I developed to perfect being theology that I call “functional theology.” My findings, if correct, are a boon for theists since if it should turn (...) out that there is no perfect being, there could still be a God. (shrink)

Dean Zimmerman has made significant contributions to metaphysics, philosophy of time, and philosophy of religion. In this paper, I set my focus on Zimmerman’s approach to God, time, and creation. Zimmerman has defended a model of God called open theism on which God is essentially temporal. In this paper, I will first articulate open theism. Then I will explore a series of puzzles related to God’s perfect rationality and creation. These can be stated as the following three (...) questions. Why didn’t God create sooner? Why did God create anything at all? Why did God create this universe in particular? (shrink)

This paper considers whether theism is compatible with moral error theory. This issue is neglected, perhaps because it is widely assumed that these views are incompatible. I argue that this is mistaken. In so doing, I articulate the best argument for thinking that theism and moral error theory are incompatible. According to it, these views are incompatible because theism entails that God is morally good, and moral error theory entails that God is not. I reject this argument. (...) Since it is the best argument for thinking that theism and moral error theory are incompatible, I conclude that these views are compatible: one can coherently accept both views. (shrink)

God is traditionally taken to be a perfect being, and the creator and sustainer of all that is. So, if theism is true, what sort of world should we expect? To answer this question, we need an account of the array of possible worlds from which God is said to choose. It seems that either there is (a) exactly one best possible world; or (b) more than one unsurpassable world; or (c) an infinite hierarchy of increasingly better (...) worlds. Influential arguments for atheism have been advanced on each hierarchy, and these jointly comprise a daunting trilemma for theism. In this paper, I argue that if theism is true, we should expect the actual world to be a multiverse comprised of all and only those universes which are worthy of creation and sustenance. I further argue that this multiverse is the unique best of all possible worlds. Finally, I explain how his unconventional view bears on the trilemma for theism. (shrink)

The Anselmian Thesis is the thesis that God is that than which nothing greater can be thought. In this paper, I argue that such a notion of God is incoherent due to greatness being indefinitely extensible: roughly, for any great being that can be, there is another one that is greater, so there cannot be a being than which nothing greater can be. Someone will say that it is impossible to produce the best, because there is no (...) perfect creature, and that it is always possible to produce one which would be more perfect.’ G.W. Leibniz. Theodicy. Edited by A. Farrer (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1985. Pp. 249.). (shrink)

Byerly has proposed a novel solution to the gap problem for cosmological arguments. I contend that his strategy can be used to strengthen a wide range of other theistic arguments as well, and also to stitch them together into a cumulative case for theism. I illustrate these points by applying Byerly’s idea about cosmological arguments to teleological arguments.

This chapter contains sections titled: Omniscience as Having All Knowledge Omniscience as Having All Factual Knowledge Conclusion Works cited.

In this article, I seek to provide a philosophical elucidation of the thesis of open theism. This task will be performed by utilising the conception of open theism, Generic Open Theism, provided by Alan Rhoda (and precisified in part by William Hasker). This conception will then be further elucidated through the employment of the notion of libertarianism, as proposed by Robert Kane, which will enable the thesis of Generic Open Theism to be shown to not be (...) subject to two important challenges: the Prophecy Challenge and the Divine Bodgery Challenge—which are challenges that focus on showing the incompatibility of perfect being theism, scripture and providence with the central tenets of Open Theism. Thus, in the end, one will be able to affirm the veracity of Open Theism within a scripturally grounded, perfect being theistic framework. (shrink)

Blame and also punishment do not reach many agents in the sense that many agents are not motivated to ethically self‐correct, and in fact, may be worsened by these practices. The main reasons agents may not be reached by them are that the agent's second nature may make inaccessible to him a sound appreciation of ethical considerations, and the fixity of mature character may make ethical self‐correction practically impossible. Still, when they are ethically rationalized, blame and punishment seem to be (...) requirements. Even the most plausible secular or naturalistic ethics involves an important kind of incompleteness and unclarity concerning this issue. The Jewish and Christian traditions involve conceptions of the accessibility of ethical considerations and also the possibility of character change in ways that enable us to overcome the perplexity about blame and punishment. They are not ‘good for nothing’ even when they fail to improve agents. The religious traditions' conceptions of moral agency and the possibility of perfection enable us to see why there are reasons not to ethically ‘write off’ even persistently vicious agents. Moreover, we can see that the fulfilling of ethical requirements is an enabling condition for perfection that is not merely ethical. To highlight the contrast between the naturalistic view and the theistic view, Aristotle's moral psychology and moral epistemology are contrasted with those of Maimonides and Aquinas, both of whom borrow heavily from Aristotle, but fundamentally transform what they borrow. (shrink)

My claim in this article is that the thesis that Buddhism has no God, insofar as it is taken to apply to Buddhism universally, is false. I defend this claim by interpreting a central text in East-Asian Buddhism – The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna – through the lenses of perfect being theology (PBT), a research programme in philosophy of religion that attempts to provide a description of God through a two-step process: (1) defining God in terms of (...) maximal greatness; (2) inferring the properties or attributes that God must have in virtue of satisfying the definition. My argument comprises two steps. First, I argue that, since PBT is a method for providing a description of God starting from a definition of God, any text that contains a PBT ipso facto contains a notion of God. Second, I argue through textual evidence that The Awakening articulates a PBT, concluding that it contains a notion of God. Since the method of PBT leaves open what descriptions are to be inferred, my argument allows me to conclude that a text contains a notion of God without previously committing to any particular conception of the divine, which makes it particularly versatile and powerful. (shrink)

This new collection of philosophically rigorous essays critiques the interpretation of divine omniscience known as open theism, focusing primarily on philosophically motivated open theism and positing arguments that reject divine knowledge of future contingents in the face of the dilemma of freedom and foreknowledge. The sixteen new essays in this collection, written by some of the most renowned philosophers on the topic of divine providence, represent a philosophical attempt to seriously consider open theism. They cover a wide (...) variety of issues, including: the ontology of time, systematic metaphysics, perfect being theology, the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, the problem of evil, and the nature of divine knowledge in general. _Philosophical Essays Against Open Theism _advances the discussion by wrestling against the assertions of open theism, and will be of interest to both proponents and opponents of this controversial issue. (shrink)

Surely God, as a perfectly rational being, created the universe for some _reason_. But is God’s creating the universe for a reason compatible with divine impassibility? That is the question I investigate in this article. The _prima facie_ tension between impassibility and God’s creating for a reason arises from impassibility’s commitment to God being uninfluenced by anything _ad extra_. If God is uninfluenced in this way, asks the detractor, how could he be moved to create anything at all? (...) This _prima facie_ tension has recently been formalized and dubbed the ‘Problem of Arbitrary Creation’. In this article, I defend a new extension of this problem. I begin by characterizing classical theism, divine simplicity, and divine impassibility. I then spell out the Problem of Arbitrary Creation as developed by R. T. Mullins. I next raise a worry for Mullins’ version of the argument. Finally, I extend the argument and show how my extension avoids the aforementioned worry. (shrink)

According to classical theism, contingent beings find the ultimate explanation for their existence in a maximally perfect, necessary being who transcends the natural world and wills its acts in accordance with reasons. I contend that if this thesis is true, it is likely that contingent reality is vastly greater than what current scientific theory or even speculation fancies. After considering the implications of this contention for the extent of divine freedom, I go on to discuss its relevance (...) to the problem of evil as an obstacle to rational theistic belief. (shrink)

The first chapter of this study presents the context for the current discussion. It looks at the reality of evil and the search for adequate answers to the problem of evil. The open theistic alternative is one among many struggles to find meaning in adversity. This chapter also presents the study method and the criteria adopted for analysing the open theistic proposal. -/- The second chapter examines earlier philosophical and theological conceptions of divine foreknowledge, divine control, human freedom and contingencies. (...) Two representatives were selected to explore three significant concepts of God: Classical Theism (CT), Molinism (M) and process theism (PT). -/- The third chapter answers when and why open theism started and what it represents. We have shown that although the coinage “open theism” (OT) was made by Richard Rice about forty years ago, the ideas this view propagates have precursory influences from a host of earlier philosophers and theologians like Jacob Arminius, Adam Clarke, Lorenzo McCabe, Jules Lequyer, and Gordon Olson. Also, there are traces of Socinianism and process theism in OT that open theists admit to. -/- The fourth chapter examines three attributes of God in OT: eternity, immutability, and divine aseity. Open theists argue that the classical notion of divine eternity is not biblical because such a notion amounts to a static view of time which does not help to resolve the tension between divine control and human freedom. OT claims that CT’s doctrine of divine immutability is a product of Greek philosophy, especially Platonism, which conflates divine immutability with immobility. Lastly, OT rejects the classical notion of divine aseity because God is relationally dependent upon His creatures, and in the end, He is a risk-taker. The fifth chapter deals with divine omniscience, divine control, human freedom and contingencies in OT. OT’s concept of divine control, omniscience and human freedom may be summarised thus: 1) At the dawn of creation, God endowed human beings with inherent powers and libertarian freedom. 2) The creation is an ongoing project with open routes. 3) Because of the openness and ongoing nature of the creation, new things are being supplied that were not part of the initial plan. 4) God accepts these additions, adjusts the divine plan, and takes responsibility for the outcome. 5) God’s knowledge is dynamic/present knowledge. The future is partly open and partly closed to God. 6) If God knows the future perfectly, humans would no longer be free since whatsoever God knows will necessarily come to pass. 7) Divine providence involves risk-taking as a result of the foregoing. -/- The sixth chapter is on OT’s concept of divine power, divine love and the problem of evil. OT denies that God could exemplify divine power and divine love maximally at the same time. As a result, love is the most essential attribute of God. OT argues that the classical doctrine of divine omnipotence is not biblical but a product of Greek philosophy. Open theists maintain that the New Testament understanding of Almightiness contradicts the loveless power that the classical notion of divine omnipotent propagates. -/- The last chapter first offers a personal reflection on the open view under three subheadings: 1) A few philosophical and theological issues in OT. 2) A theological/canonical reading of a few biblical passages that open theists reinterpreted, and 3) An argument that the supposed higher benefits of the open view might not be tenable. In the second place, it points out what might be learned from the open theistic alternative. Lastly, it makes some recommendations for further studies in the analytic philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. (shrink)

Among the most influential arguments for the existence of God, cosmological and ontological arguments have a special standing. This thesis aims to bridge the gap between these arguments, and combine their strengths, so as to establish the existence of God, understood as a significantly powerful and knowledgeable being that is the ultimate cause of everything other than itself. After highlighting several challenges that face arguments grounded in Perfect Being Theology (PBT), I propose the concept of a ‘sovereign (...) being’, namely a self-subsistent being that has significant control over the happenings of the world, as a promising alternative foundation for theistic argumentation. The thesis consists of six self-contained papers defending various aspects of the proposed case for theism. This includes a novel First Cause argument and two arguments for the existence of a unique sovereign being. I supplement my deductive reasoning with an inductive argument to further support my overall conclusion. The papers are intended to uncover hitherto unnoticed connections between some general metaphysical theses and the debate about the existence of God. They should appeal to a broad audience of metaphysicians who may or may not have an interest in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Anti-theists argue that the world, or our lives, would be overall worse if God exists because God’s existence imposes distinctive downsides. Many hold, however, that anti-theism is incoherent if we assume that God would not permit gratuitous evil to occur. This is because that would entail that any alleged downsides of God’s existence would be permitted only if they are necessary to bring about a greater good or to prevent an even greater evil. I will argue that this emerging (...) consensus is mistaken: the argument from the principle of non-gratuitous evil to the falsity of anti-theism is invalid because it trades on an ambiguity. Appealing directly to God’s perfect goodness fails for similar reasons. Anti-theism can therefore only be rejected via substantive axiological debate. (shrink)

It is well known that Augustine, Boethius, Anselm and Aquinas participated in a tradition of philosophical theology which determined God to be simple, perfect, immutable and timelessly eternal. Within the parameters of such an Hellenic understanding of the divine nature, they sought a clarification of one of the fundamental teachings of their Christian faith, the doctrine of the Trinity. These classical theists were not dogmatists, naively unreflective about the very possibility of their project. Aquinas, for instance, explicitly worried about (...) and fought to dispel the seeming contradiction between the philosophical requirement of divine simplicity and the creedal insistence on a threefold personhood in God. 1 Nevertheless, doubts abound. Philosophers otherwise friendly to Classical Theism still remain unsure about the coherence of affirming a God that is at once absolutely simple and triune. 2 A less friendly critic has even suggested that the theory of divine simplicity pressured Augustine and his medieval followers away from recognizing that real complexity within the life of God which Trinitarianism expresses. 3. (shrink)

Many theists conceive of God as a perfect being, i.e., as that than which none greater is metaphysically possible. On this grand view of God, it seems plausible to think that such a supreme and maximally great being would not be subject to luck of any sort. Given the divine perfections, God is completely insulated from luck. However, I argue that the opposite is true: precisely because God is perfect, he is subject to a kind of (...) luck called constitutive luck. In this paper, first I provide an analysis of luck and then explain the concept of constitutive luck. I proceed to defend constitutive luck from charges of incoherence and examine a different approach to make sense of this luck. Furthermore, I distinguish between two kinds of constitutive luck and argue that even if God isn’t subject to one kind, evading the second kind is unsuccessful. I offer two ways that God is constitutively lucky and reach a surprising conclusion: a perfect being is the luckiest of all possible beings. (shrink)

The minimal God exemplifies essential omnipotence, omniscience, and moral perfection, but none of the other properties of the traditional God. I examine the consequences of the minimal God in augmented S5, S4, and Kρσ. The metaphysical consequences for the minimal God in S5 include the impossibility that God—or any other object—might acquire, lose, or exchange an essential property. It is impossible that an essentially divine being might become essentially human, for instance. The epistemological consequences include the impossibility of agnosticism—it (...) is impossible that P(◻︎FG |E) = P(~◻︎FG| E). Indeed, every weaker forms of agnosticism are also impossible—it is impossible that P(◻︎FG |E) = n, n(0 < n < 1). The metaphysical and epistemological consequences for the minimal God in S4 are equally untenable. I show that we can avoid all of these unwelcome epistemological consequences for the minimal God in Kρσ. But Kρσ has some extraordinary metaphysical consequences for the minimal God. All of the problems for the minimal God generalize to the maximal God. (shrink)

The problem of evil may be characterized as the problem of how precisely to specify a property, P , about which it is possible for a morally sensitive man to believe that a person who possesses it would be morally justified on that account in not preventing instances of intense innocent suffering and it is neither impossible nor unlikely that if there is an omnipotent and omniscient being, he possesses it. Atheists have typically claimed that P cannot be precisely (...) specified. Moreover, they have maintained that in view of our inability to give a precise specification of P , it is irrational to believe that there is an omnipotent and omniscient being who is perfectly good and, hence, irrational to believe that God exists. In the remainder of this paper, I want to discuss the question whether there is any good reason for believing that this latter thesis is true. 1 If there is no such reason, then no matter how much he may busy himself with an attempt at formulating a precise specification of P , the theist can be justifiably contented with the thought that it doesn't much matter whether he succeeds. (shrink)

One of the oldest conceptions of theology is discourse of the poets about the gods and its philosophical interpretation. Judaism and Christianity borrowed this Greek understanding of theology and revised it only slightly to reflect its own monotheistic vision of God and God’s relations to and with the world of nature and human existence. The question as to which philosophy best explicates and justifies the oral and written mythopoetic discourse of the imaginative bards of Israel and the early Christian community (...) became a fundamental issue and has remained so through the centuries. The aim of this essay is to explore this question once again in the context of post-liberal theology in general, the works of Abraham Heschel, Claude Tresmontant, and the Japanese theologian Tetsaturo Ariga on an implicit biblical philosophy and the explicit metaphysical theism of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. The outcome of this exploration will be a rational reconstruction or ideal type of neo-classical theism or what I have chosen to call existential-hayatological theism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXII, Number 2, November 1996, pp. 325-337 Hume's Aesthetic Theism JOHN IMMERWAHR When it comes to religion, Hume's motto is corruptio optimi pessima, "the corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst" (NHR 338,339, SScE 73).1 He warmly endorses what he calls "true religion" and strongly attacks false religion, superstition and priestcraft. Hume's distaste for false religion is obviously sincere, but scholars have (...) sometimes wondered how seriously to take Hume's "veneration for true religion" (DNR 219). Are his favorable comments about true religion honest or is this just one more smokescreen?2 In fact, Hume tells us very little about what he calls "true religion," "true theism" or "genuine piety." At one point Hume even drafted an apology to readers of his History of England for the fact that "the Mischiefs which arise from the Abuses of Religion, are so often mentioned, while so little in comparison is said of the salutary Consequences which result from true & genuine piety."3 In what follows I look at a number of the passages where Hume does discuss true religion, in an attempt to ask what makes true religion true.4 In brief, his answer is that the superiority of genuine theism results from its moral qualities rather than its epistemological warrant.5 Unlike other forms of religion, true religion is based on the calm passions rather than the violent ones and as such it alone is able to perform "the proper Office of religion" which is to reinforce and support morality.6 While Hume never wavers from his position that morality does not require any religious or theological commitment, he does feel that at least this one approach to religion has a positive moral contribution to make. John Immerwahr is at the Department of Philosophy, Villanova University, Villanova PA 19085-1699 USA. Email: Immerwa@Email.Vill.Edu 326 John Immerwahr True religion in Hume's writings Scattered through Hume's writings are a number of references to a minimalistic religion that is immune from the usual Humean critiques. The exempted form of religion is what Gaskin describes as an "attenuated Deism," which includes a conviction of the existence of God as the cause of order in the universe, together with a commitment to a secular human morality.7 Here are a few passages where this form of religion is mentioned: The Natural History of Religion: The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion. (NHR 309) History of England: In every religion, except the true, [the diligence of the clergy] is highly pernicious, and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the true, by infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition, folly, and delusion. (HE III 135) Dialogues concerning Natural Religion: Philo: All the new discoveries in astronomy, which prove the immense grandeur and magnificence of the works of Nature, are so many additional arguments for a Deity, according to the true system of Theism. (DNR 165) It is, of course, dangerous to take anything Hume says about religion at face value. On the one hand, Hume's religious works, such as his essay on miracles, were a major force in attracting the kind of literary reputation which he so much desired. On the other hand, he lived with the constant possibility of persecution by the ultra-conservative wing of the Scottish church.8 One of his self-protective techniques is to criticize one religious position only from the framework of another. This allows him a certain "deniability" in that he can always say that he was only criticizing a specific form of religion, not religion generally.9 At least some of what he says about true religion can probably be written off as protective coloration. Nonetheless, if we take seriously what Hume says about the "suitable notions of [God's] divine perfections" (DNR 88) we come up with a model of true religion that is compatible with Hume's overall perspective. The justifiability of true theism What makes true religion true? Hume tells... (shrink)

Mark Murphy has recently defended a novel account of divine agency on which God would have very minimal requiring reasons and a wide range of merely justified reasons. This account grounds his response to the problem of evil. If God would not have requiring reasons to promote the well-being of creatures, Murphy argues, then the evil we observe would not count as evidence against theism. I argue that Murphy's conclusion, if successful in undermining the problem of evil, also (...) undermines probabilistic arguments for theism. However, there is good reason to resist his conclusion. Even if God does not have requiring reasons, but merely has justifying reasons, to promote creaturely well-being, God may nevertheless have most motivating reason to do so, and this would be enough to predict divine action, at least given Murphy's further assumption that God is perfectly free. It does not follow from the rational permissibility of God's Φ-ing that it is possible for God to Φ. (shrink)

The epistemology of monotheism offered by philosophers has given inadequate attention to the kind of foundational evidence to be expected of a personal God whose moral character is ’agapeic’, or perfectly loving, toward all other agents. This article counters this deficiency with the basis of a theistic epistemology that accommodates the distinctive moral character of a God worthy of worship. It captures the widely neglected ’agonic’, or struggle-oriented, character of a God who seeks, by way of personal witness and intentional (...) action, to realize and manifest ’agape’ among humans who suffer from selfishness. In doing so, the article identifies the overlooked role of personifying evidence of God in human moral character formation. In agreement with some prominent New Testament themes, the new perspective offered ties the epistemology of monotheism to robust ’agapeic’ morality in a way that makes such epistemology ethically challenging for inquirers about God’s existence. Accordingly, s. (shrink)

According to The Evidentialist problem of Evil, the existence of disproportionate, prima facie gratuitous evil and suffering in the world is enough evidence against the existence of the Omnipotent, Perfectly Loving, Omniscient God of Classical Theism. A contemporary way of dealing with this argument is Skeptical Theism, for which the very fact that there is an huge amount of evil that looks gratuitous to us does not mean that we can reasonably believe whether this evil is indeed gratuitous (...) or not. In this paper, I present and discuss a number of influential criticisms against this view according to which a proponent of Skeptical Theism will be forced to accept a number of unpalatable skeptical conclusions. I argue that this is not the case. (shrink)

According to Michael Bergmann, Skeptical Theism consists of two components: firstly, the belief that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing and perfectly good immaterial person who created the world, and secondly, the skeptical claim that we have no reason to believe that the possible goods and evils we know of are representative of the goods and evils that exist. According to the Global Skepticism Objection, Skeptical Theism entails that we should not be surprised if we are radically deceived by (...) God: there just might be a greater good that can figure in a reason God has for deceiving us about reality. In support of this objection, Stephen Law presents an amusing analogy involving Olly and his reality-projector. In this paper, I outline the Global Skepticism Objection and Law’s case in support of it. I then respond by arguing that the scope of Skeptical Theism should be restricted, and seek to justify this through a narrower construal of Theism and an appeal to common sense. (shrink)

The fact of evil has worried theists for a long time. The earliest clear statement of this worry is perhaps to be found in the book of Habbakuk: (i, 13). More precisely formulated, it comes to this: if God is good and omnipotent, why evil ? From his goodness it would follow necessarily that he does not will evil and from his omnipotence that he could prevent it; why then should it occur? Theists have attempted to escape from this dilemma (...) by means of an argument which turns on the claim that human beings are, to some degree at any rate, free to choose and act as they will. They are free to do good or evil; frequently they choose the latter and that is why evils, or at least many of them, occur. This human freedom, however, is a necessary condition of personality and, as such, a great good; so it is perfectly consistent with the goodness of God that he should will it. But what of his omnipotence? The point of the argument is that God has to allow those evils which result from men making evil choices, and this certainlylooks, at first blush, like a limitation of his power. But, we are assured,it is not really a limitation because all it amounts to is that God cannot do the logically impossible, viz., make beings who, at one and the same time, are both free to do what they will and pre-determined to do good.To deny that God can do the logically impossible, of course, is not to den his omnipotence; it is merely to point out that there are some things which it would not make sense to say that he had done. (shrink)

The idea of divine hiddenness looks for why there is no evident and unequivocal evidence of God's existence and seeks to answer these questions within the philosophy of religion. Those who criticize complain that if all things are being done well, he would be conspicuously displayed; the existence of these honest unbelievers indicates a lack of care or no such thing at all. To this, theists reply that divine hiddenness has needful purposes, e.g., keeping free will, provoking true faith, (...) and facilitating moral and spiritual perfection growth. This paper analyses the arguments for and against divine hiddenness concerning the consequences of belief, faith, and human reasoning. The discussion suggests the subtle relationship between divine presence and human perception, which is a key issue in religious epistemology. The process of faith and reason continues to be a battle that the current theism faces, thus causing epistemological challenges. Recent theories of arguments for God's existence have come under scrutiny, but rationalist theists continue to elaborate philosophical counter-arguments. Divine hiddenness, the problem of evil, and the nature of religious experience are the issues that contribute to the discourse, which requires a proper balance between theological commitment and philosophical inquiry. Ultimately, though, this process of enquiring into epistemic justification in theism continues to be a dialogue stemming from humanity and how human beings understand and believe. (shrink)

“Orthodox theism” is “the cognitive core” of mainstream religious belief in the Abrahamic tradition, according to which God is the omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good designer, creator, and sustainer of the world, who made us so that we might develop into morally mature agents capable of choosing freely to love God, on the basis of which we will be judged and our eternal destinies determined. O’Connor aims to pose a problem for this view, namely, that given the “standard assumption” (...) governing discussion of God and evil since Hume, a certain fact about natural evil that results solely from natural processes constitutes good reason to think that OT is false. The standard assumption is that we can compare by way of thought experiment how things are with how they would be if there were a God and with how they would be if there were no God, and thereby, we can, in principle, ground a justified verdict about whether God exists. The fact in question is that it seems that, necessarily, NERNP is gratuitous. Since God and gratuitous evil are incompatible, it follows that we have fairly strong prima facie reason to think that there is NERNP that is incompatible with God, and consequently that OT is false. (shrink)

Euteleology is a metaphysics according to which reality is inherently purposive and the contingent Universe exists ultimately because reality’s overall telos, the supreme good, is realized within it. This book provides an exposition of euteleology and a defence of its coherence. The main aim is to establish that euteleological metaphysics provides a religiously adequate alternative to the ‘personal-omniGod’ understanding of theism prevalent amongst analytic philosophers. The quest for an alternative to understanding the God of the Abrahamic traditions as an (...) omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect personal being is motivated by criticizing the religious adequacy of this conception of God. This criticism deploys a ‘normatively relativized’ version of the ‘logical’ Argument from Evil: it is argued that an omnipotent personal agent would unavoidably be responsible for a morally flawed relationship with human beings caught up in horrendous evils. Reasons are given for preferring a ‘non-personalist’ account of theism, and the religious adequacy of a euteleological theism is then defended against two main objections—first, that it faces a problem of evil that threatens its coherence, and, second, that it cannot make good sense of the practices of prayer and worship that are essential to theist religion. An important theme is that, though God is not a personal being, nor any kind of ‘being amongst beings’ in basic euteleological ontology, God-talk may be understood as resting on a radical analogy that is apt for enabling right human responses to ultimate divine reality. (shrink)

I argue that classical theism has a significant advantage as a theory of the First Cause over Graham Oppy’s naturalistic account. This is because classical theism not only gives us a clear answer to the question of how many first causes there are but also because it explains why there is that number and not another. In comparison, Oppy’s ‘initial physical state’ account seemingly leaves these questions hopelessly open, and so does his ‘metaphysical simples’ proposal for a foundational (...) layer of reality. I end by exploring two arguments from omnipotence and perfection that could be of use also to non-classical theists. (shrink)

The relation between morality and religion has often been discussed. However, it is not always recognized that the relation varies greatly according to the variety of religions. I shall here be concerned solely with Christian theism in its traditional form. I take the latter to signify, essentially, belief in a morally perfect Creator who exists in the threefold form of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and who, in the person of the Son, became man in Christ for our (...) salvation. I thus exclude from consideration all non-theistic accounts of God or the Absolute. Also I shall consider, not simply bare theism of the kind that Christians share with Jews and Muslims, but also the distinctively Christian form of theism that is generated by distinctively Christian revelation. Many otherwise sound descriptions of the relation between morality and theism are defective because they fail to consider the distinctively Christian contribution to the theistic concept of God and of his relation to the world. (shrink)

According to the traditional Christian understanding, being devoted to God is partly constitutive of human welfare. I explicate this tradition view, in three stages. First, I sketch a general theory of well-being which I call ‘Platonic Personalist Perfectionism.’ Second, I show how being devoted to God is uniquely perfective. I discuss three different components of the posture of devotion: abnegation (surrender of one’s will to God), adoration (responding to God’s goodness with attention, love and praise), and existential (...) dependence (receiving one’s self-worth as an unmerited gift from God). All three components of devotion are perfective in a dual way: they are salvific (they remediate a great harm) and consummative (they confer a great benefit). Third, I respond to the objection that devotion involves subjugating oneself, and thus amounts to an all-things-considered harm, notwithstanding whatever benefits it confers. I argue that so long as one’s acts of abnegating, adoring, and existentially depending are acts of one’s own, then subjugation is not essential to devotion. However, devotion does diminish one if the object of one’s devotion is unsuitable. I argue that the only suitable object of devotion is the God of traditional theism. (shrink)

In the 1970s, Alvin Plantinga made use of the Anselmian concept of God to develop a modal version of Anselm's ontological argument for God's existence. His definition describes the God of perfect-being theology as one that exists necessarily and is essentially omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect, and this definition has become standard in discussions about the nature and existence of the God of western theism. Hence, these discussions operate with a relatively thin conception of God, since (...) many of the key terms in the definition, including essential moral perfection, remain undefined. Philosophers find this attractive in some ways, since it permits an a priori approach to explicating the divine perfections. One drawback for the minimalist approach, however, is that it can impede the effort to connect philosophical theology with religious faith. This article discusses three major ways of modelling divine moral perfection and considers some of the major objections to the claim that God is necessarily morally perfect. (shrink)

In this essay I use the notion of divine values, those values analytically assigned to the concept of God, as a means of understanding replies to criticisms of open theism. I begin by orienting open theism according to the divine values open theist’s embrace within the larger context of relational theology. I then present three criticisms, a theological criticism, a practical criticism and a philosophical criticism and an open theist reply to each. Finally, I attempt to show the (...) underlying motivation which unifies the open theist’s responses and points out where progress can be made in such discussions. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)