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114Review of Patrick Todd, The Open Future. Why Future Contingents are All False (review)Zeitschrift Für Theologie Und Philosophie. forthcoming.
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175On Augustine’s Way OutFaith and Philosophy 16 (1): 3-26. 1999.This paper seeks to rehabilitate St. Augustine’s widely dismissed response to the alleged incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and free will. This requires taking a fresh look at his analysis in On Free Choice of the Will, and arguing its relevance to the current debate. Along the way, mistaken interpretations of Augustine are rebutted, his real solution is developed and defended, a reason for his not anticipating Boethius’s a temporalist solution is suggested, a favorable comparison with Ock…Read more
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109Providence, Foreknowledge, and Explanatory Loops: A Reply to RobinsonReligious Studies 40 (4 (Dec 2004)): 485-491. 2004.
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159Fatalism for PresentistsIn Per Hasle, David Jakobsen & Peter Ohstrom (eds.), The Metaphysics of Time: Themes on Prior, Aalborg University Press. pp. 299-316. 2020.
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215What Does God Know? The Problems of Open TheismIn Paul Copan & William Lane Craig (eds.), Contending with Christianity's Critics, B&h Publishing. pp. 265-282. 2009.
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144The Providential Advantage of Divine ForeknowledgeIn Kevin Timpe (ed.), Arguing about religion, Routledge. pp. 374-385. 2009.
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119Form and Flux in the Theaetetus_ and _TimaeusIn William A. Welton (ed.), Plato's Forms: Varieties of Interpretation, Lexington Books. pp. 151-167. 2002.
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176Theological Fatalism as an Aporetic ProblemIn Hugh J. McCann (ed.), Free Will and Classical Theism: The Significance of Freedom in Perfect Being Theology, Oxford University Press Usa. pp. 23-41. 2016.
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137Omniprescient AgencyReligious Studies 28 (3). 1992.The principle that one cannot deliberate over what one already knows is going to happen, when suitably qualified, has seemed to many philosophers to be about as secure a truth as one is likely to find in this life. Fortunately, it poses little restriction on human deliberation, since the conditions which would trigger its prohibition seldom arise for us: our knowledge of the future is intermittent at best, and those things of which we do have advance knowledge are not the sorts of things over wh…Read more
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137Contra Hasker: Why Simple Foreknowledge Is Still UsefulJournal of the Evangelical Theological Society 52 (3): 545-550. 2009.In my "The Providential Advantage of Divine Foreknowledge" (2009) I respond to John Sanders' defense of the claim, made by many open theists, that foreknowledge of future contingents provides God with no providential advantage over a God who lacks such knowledge. William Hasker responded to that paper with a defense of Sanders, and the current paper is a response to Hasker's response.
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240John Martin Fischer on the Puzzle of Theological FatalismScience, Religion and Culture 4 (2): 15-26. 2017.This is a contribution to an Author Meets Critics special issue on John Martin Fischer's _Our Fate: Essays on God and Free Will_.
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161Against Chronogeometrical FatalismChronos 8 14-25. 2006.Can free agency exist within a Minkowskian "block universe"? A negative answer to this question has been labeled 'chronogeometrical fatalism'. I look at five theses associated with Minkowskian space-time which have been thought to entail chronogeometrical fatalism, and argue that none of them delivers the goods.
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152Plotinus Meets the Third ManIn John J. Cleary (ed.), The perennial tradition of Neoplatonism, Leuven University Press. pp. 119-132. 1997.The paper explores possible resources available to Plotinus for responding to Plato's famous "Third Man Argument" in the _Parmenides_.
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842The Sleeper Awakes: Gnosis and Authenticity in The MatrixIn Faith, Film, and Philosophy: Big Ideas on the Big Screen, Intervarsity Press. pp. 89-105. 2007.I first argue that the Matrix trilogy is a Gnostic cyber-epic; I then use this interpretive lens to review the films' treatment of fundamental questions in epistemology, metaphysics, and value theory.
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156The Rationality of Belief and the Plurality of Faith (review). (review)Faith and Philosophy 15 (3): 387-394. 1998.
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186The ‘Problem of Fire’: Referring to Phenomena in Plato’s TimaeusAncient Philosophy 18 (1): 69-80. 1998.
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129The Compatibility of Divine Determinism and Human Freedom: A Modest ProposalFaith and Philosophy 19 (4): 485-502. 2002.
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353What Is the Problem of Theological Fatalism?International Philosophical Quarterly 38 (1): 17-30. 1998.I distinguish between a _metaphysical_ problem generated by the argument for theological fatalism, and a _theological_ problem posed by the argument. Some responses to the argument, including ones associated with Boethius, Aquinas and Ockham, address only the theological problem. Even if such responses succeed in showing that God's foreknowledge doesn't threaten human freedom, they fail to take the full measure of the argument for theological fatalism, since the metaphysical problem remains to…Read more
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187The Compatibility of Omniscience and Intentional Action: A Reply to Tomis KapitanReligious Studies 32 (1). 1996.The paper that follows continues a discussion with Tomis Kapitan in the pages of this journal over the compatibility of divine agency with divine foreknowledge. I had earlier argued against two premises in Kapitan's case for omniscient impotence: (i) that intentionally A-ing presupposes prior acquisition of the intention to A, and (ii) that acquiring the intention to A presupposes prior ignorance whether one will A. In response to my criticisms, Kapitan has recently offered new defences for thes…Read more
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1210Swinburne on the Conditions for Free Will and Moral ResponsibilityEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 6 (2): 39--49. 2014.
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252Thomas P. Flint, divine providence: The molinist account (review)International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 47 (1): 62-64. 1998.
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Ontological KindsDissertation, Vanderbilt University. 1983.This study consists of a series of steps toward the development of a general theory of differences in ontological kind. The first part defines the notion of a "logical individual" and argues for its role as the basic ontological unit. I also take issue with those who hold that 'exist' is equivocal, as well as with those who claim that category-mistakes lack a truth-value. This part concludes with the "existence criterion", according to which a thing exists just in case it is a logical individual…Read more
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141On a Theological Counterexample to the Principle of Alternate PossibilitiesFaith and Philosophy 19 (2): 245-255. 2002.
Vanderbilt University
PhD, 1983
Areas of Interest
1 more
Metaphysics |
Truthmakers |
Modality |
Metaphysics of Spacetime |
Free Will |
Agent Causation |