Steve L. Porter

Dallas Willard's five monographs devoted to Christian spirituality constitute a unified body of work that together present a comprehensive account of the nature and means of spiritual formation in Christ. This paper approaches Willard's corpus chronologically for the purpose of culling the central components of Willard's understanding of spiritual formation. This is not meant to be a review or summary of Willard's writings, but rather an analytical study of Willard's work and is an implicit call for further second-order scholarly reflection on the Willardian corpus.

Of the various loci of systematic theology that call for sustained philosophical investigation, the doctrine of sanctification stands out as a prime candidate. In response to that call, William Alston developed three models of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit: the fiat model, the interpersonal model, and the sharing model. In response to Alston’s argument for the sharing model, this paper offers grounds for a reconsideration of the interpersonal model. We close with a discussion of some of the implications of one’s understanding of the transforming work of the Holy Spirit for practical Christian spirituality.

The goal of this dissertation is to develop a foundationalist theory of the epistemic justification of our perceptual beliefs about physical objects. In particular, we will expose the value of a specific kind of epistemic justification, 'reflective justification', and argue that such justification is only possible within a foundationalist framework. The Achilles heel of all foundationalist theories is the notion of non-inferentially justified, foundational beliefs or experiences. We will argue that when it comes to perception this foundation is non-doxastic in character, thereby tying our foundationalism to the notion of a 'given' element in perceptual experience. This will bring us to a discussion of Wilfred Sellars's 'myth of the given' and a recent attempt by Laurence BonJour to defend a foundationalist theory that escapes the Sellarsian dilemma. Our consideration of BonJour will propel us to a defense of a direct realist theory of perception and, after a critical appraisal of Donald Davidson and John McDowell on the nature of concepts, the development of a non-constructivist theory of conceptualized perceptual awareness. The conjunction of these two positions---direct realism and non-constructivism---lays the theoretical basis for our decisive claim that the perceptual awareness of physical objects provides non-inferential justification for our perceptual beliefs about those physical objects

This paper is a philosophical defense of the doctrine of penal substitution. I begin with a delineation of Richard Swinburne’s satisfaction-type theory of the atonement, exposing a weakness of it which motivates a renewed look at the theory of penal substitution. In explicating a theory of penal substitution, I contend that: (i) the execution of retributive punishment is morally justified in certain cases of deliberate wrongdoing; (ii) deliberate human sin against God constitutes such a case; and (iii) the transfer of the retributive punishment due sinners to Christ is morally coherent. Whatever else might be said for and against such a conception of the doctrine of the atonement, the plausibility of the theory presented here should give us pause in the often hasty rejection of the doctrine of penal substitution.