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115Anselm on the Beauty of the IncarnationModern Schoolman 72 (2-3). 1995.Among the objections to the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation which Anselm takes up in ’Cur Deus Nomo’ is an argument that a wise God would not act so, because it is inefficient. I explicate Anselm’s reply to this. It is (I argue) that the Incarnation is an elegant way to achieve a large set of goods including human salvation, and that God might well be wise to treat a sort of beauty the Incarnation involves as a value more important than efficiency
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374Anselm's neglected argumentPhilosophy 77 (3): 331-347. 2002.Anselm is commonly credited with two a priori arguments for God's existence, the non-modal argument of Proslogion 2 and a modal argument some find in Proslogion 3. But his Reply to Gaunilo contains a third. The argument as Anselm gives it has flaws, but they are not fatal, and its main premise can serve as the basis of a simpler, stronger argument.
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371A Leibnizian cosmological argumentPhilosophical Studies 57 (2). 1989.I explicate and defend leibniz's argument from "eternal truths" to the existence of god. I argue that necessary beings can be caused to exist, Showing how one can apply a counterfactual analysis to such causation, Then argue that if such beings can be caused to exist, They are
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434A Latin TrinityFaith and Philosophy 21 (3): 304-333. 2004.Latin models of the Trinity begin from the existence of one God, and try to explain how one God can be three Persons. I offer an account of this based on an analogy with time-travel. A time-traveler returning to the same point in time repeatedly might have three successive events in his/her life occurring at that one location in public time. So too, God’s life might be such that three distinct parts of His life are always occurring at once, though without any succession between them, and this mi…Read more
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5Aquinas, divine simplicity and divine freedomIn Kevin Timpe (ed.), Metaphysics and God: Essays in Honor of Eleonore Stump, Routledge. 2009.
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267Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, Questions on God (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2006.Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest of the medieval philosophers. His Summa Theologiae is his most important contribution to Christian theology, and one of the main sources for his philosophy. This volume offers most of the Summa's first 26 questions, including all of those on the existence and nature of God. Based on the 1960 Blackfriars translation, this version has been extensively revised by Brian Davies and also includes an introduction by Brian Leftow which places the questions in their…Read more
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139Book Review:The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge. Linda Zagzebski (review)Ethics 103 (1): 163. 1992.
