Frances Howard-Snyder

This volume collects nine essays published by Peter van Inwagen between 1977 and 1995. Part I features, among other things, modal skepticism with respect to ontological arguments and arguments from evil. Part II addresses certain tensions Christians may feel between modern biology, critical studies of the New Testament, and the comparative study of religions, on the one hand, and Christian orthodoxy, on the other. Part III deploys a formal logic of relative identity to model the internal consistency of the orthodox doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. In what follows, we summarize and reflect on five essays.

This book explores and defends George Saunders’ causal thesis that successful stories are those that establish causation well. The book includes an in-depth discussion of causation’s role in several different key craft elements of fiction writing and examines different theories of causation and their implications for causation in fiction. Other discussions include the role of causation in building suspense, character and causation, causation in dialogue and connections between fiction and counterfactuals (or hypotheticals). The book also considers a number of objections to the causal thesis and offers a reply.

What kind of love does the commandment "Love your neighbor as yourself" enjoin? On the basis of textual and analogical evidence, I argue that in enjoins love not unlike the natural loves we have for our family and lovers. If this is right, we can use our experience of those loves as models for how we should feel and act towards other human beings. I argue that the love this commandment advocates is emotional love, rather than practical love. I respond to a number of objections to this, and in the process, present some support for the view that we ought to love our neighbors. ;This leads to the question: "If the love commanded by the commandment is psychological love, what does it have to say about how I should act? And if it has nothing to say about action, isn't it a pretty poor sort of morality?" I argue that, since love involves desires for the well-being of the beloved, one couldn't genuinely love without pursuing that well-being. I concede, however, that it cannot provide a complete guide to action: there are many morally significant choice situations where it would not tell us what to do because it doesn't say what people's interests consist in. The commandment needs to be supplemented with some other moral facts. An objector might complain that these extra facts do all the work, that the commandment is a mere moral tautology, "Try to do what is right by others." This is a false impression. The commandment entails several controversial moral claims. ;The rest of the dissertation discusses the more interesting of these, and tries to argue that where the commandment entails a controversial ethical position, it is correct in doing so. For example, in chapter 4, I argue that it would not attach moral significance to the distinction between killing and letting die. In chapter 5, I argue that it would allow very little room for supererogation. These two conclusions raise the question of whether it is equivalent to utilitarianism. This is not the case. There are several respects in which the commandment is inconsistent with utilitarianism. Among other differences, I point to the fact that the commandment rejects claims which are central to the very essence of consequentialism. I argue that the commandment includes agent-centered restrictions and agent-centered prerogatives