Kevin Timpe

Many Christian theologians have struggled with how people with disabilities could be perfectly united to God in the afterlife. For some, union with God requires that those with disabilities will have their disabilities ‘cured’ or ‘healed’ prior to heavenly union with God. Others have suggested that certain disabilities preclude an individual’s ability to be united with God, thus suggesting, even if only implicitly, that such individuals have no eschatological place in the Body of Christ. In this chapter, I develop an argument for the possibility of individuals retaining their disabilities in the eschaton and nevertheless enjoying complete union with God (and through God to others). While I don’t think that the argument I develop here applies equally well to all disabilities, I think it gives us good reason to consider heavenly disability as a plausible part of speculative theology.

This chapter focuses on the first sin, often referred to as the primal sin. In particular, it contrasts a voluntarist account of the primal sin with an intellectualist account. The representative voluntarist account examined is Katherine Rogers’s work on Anselm, and the representative intellectualist account is Scott MacDonald’s work on Augustine. One frequent objection to voluntarist accounts of free will is that they leave an agent’s choice fundamentally inexplicable or arbitrary. This chapters argues that with respect to explain the primal sin, intellectualism fairs no better as both accounts involve an unresolved arbitrariness. This suggests that, at least for theists, voluntarist accounts are not as comparatively problematic as many believe them to be.

A number of scholars have claimed that, on the assumption of incompatibilism, there is a conflict between God’s freedom and God’s essential moral perfection. Jesse Couenhoven, for instance, thinks that libertarian views of divine freedom are problematic given God’s essential moral perfection. Others who argue for similar conclusions include William Rowe and Wes Morriston. Michael Bergmann and Jan Cover have recently argued that divine responsibility and moral perfection are compatible with the absence of divine freedom. This essay by Kevin Timpe holds that the arguments for the conclusion that divine freedom conflicts with essential divine moral perfection fail. Instead, he develops an account of divine freedom that not only doesn’t conflict with God’s essential moral goodness but also shows that such goodness is a necessary part of perfected freedom.

In this paper, I explore some of the motivations behind John Martin Fischer's semi-compatibilism. Particularly, I look at three reasons Fischer gives for preferring semi-compatibilism to libertarianism. I argue that the first two of these motivations are in tension with each other: the more one is moved by the first motivation, the less one can appeal to the second, and vice versa. I then argue that Fischer's third motivation ought not move anyone to prefer Fischer's semi-compatibilist picture to any of the leading contemporary libertarian theories. Finally, I make some methodological comments about the role intuitions play in Fischer's project.

This paper explores the relationship between anger and flourishing in light of structural injustice. Even when anger is an appropriate response to structural injustice, it can carry significant personal cost. In non-ideal circumstances, anger may be morally required even though it detracts from personal flourishing. Drawing on Lisa Tessman’s work, I argue that anger at structural injustice, even if we are not among those against whom the injustice is directed, can be a burdened virtue. I extend Tessman’s analysis to show how burdened virtues can arise in response to particularly structural injustices, and explicitly note additional burdens that can arise in such instances.

_Arguing About Religion_ is an ideal collection for students interested in contemporary philosophy of religion and related disciplines. This volume brings together primary readings from over 40 of the world’s leading philosophers of religion, covering a broad range of issues. Set alongside these works of academic philosophy are excerpts from controversial popular works by Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins, in order to introduce the philosophical issues in a way that demonstrates their relevance to everyday life and sets them in the context of contemporary cultural discourse. The volume is divided into 6 parts, helping the student get to grips with classic and core arguments. Topics covered include: methodological issues in philosophy of religion God’s nature and existence evil and divine hiddenness providence and interaction the afterlife religion and contemporary life Featuring lucid general and section introductions and a glossary by volume editor Kevin Timpe, _Arguing About Religion _is an ideal starting point for students coming to philosophy of religion for the first time.

Ted Honderich offers “Attitudinism” as an alternative to the traditional categories of compatibilism and incompatibilism regarding free will and determinism. In earlier work, I argued that Attitudinism should, despite Honderich’s claims, be understood as a species of compatibilism. In the present chapter, I suggest a way of resisting my earlier argument. I begin by giving an overview of Attitudinism and summarize my earlier criticism. I then explore Honderich’s claim that we have multiple ideas of the nature of free will and connect Attitudinism with some recent work in the philosophy of social science regarding the nature and use of concepts.

"Contemporary research in philosophy of religion is dominated by traditional problems such as the nature of evil, arguments against theism, issues of foreknowledge and freedom, the divine attributes, and religious pluralism. This volume instead focuses on unrepresented and underrepresented issues in the discipline. The essays address how issues like race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, feminist and pantheist conceptions of the divine, and nonhuman animals connect to existing issues in philosophy of religion. By staking out new avenues for future research, this book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars in analytic philosophy of religion and analytic philosophical theology"--

Cognitively disabled individuals have been marginalized by our larger culture; they’ve also been marginalized in philosophical discussions. This paper seeks to begin correcting this situation by examining how assumptions which shape our social interactions and expectations disadvantage individuals with a range of cognitive disabilities. After considering Rubella syndrome and autism in detail, I argue that we have a moral obligation to change how we approach social interactions with cognitively disabled individuals.

Part of the traditional Christian doctrine of sin is the claim that, due to the effects of original sin, acts of sin are inevitable. Of course, our reflection on sinful actions is shaped by how we think about human freedom and divine providence more broadly. Some have argued that libertarians have a difficult time accounting for the inevitability of sin. This paper uses David Lewis’s work on counterfactuals and possible worlds to give an account of how the inevitability of sin can be understood. It then shows how both theological determinism and Molinism can give an account of sin’s inevitability so understood. In doing so, I show that sin’s inevitability only follows if we restrict our focus to certain possible worlds that share certain features with the actual world. But once such a restriction is made explicit, I then develop a framework for how the libertarian non-Molinist can also use a similar restriction to give an account of the inevitability of sin given original sin.

This paper argues that there are reasons to believe that there is no single concept or category which demarcates all individuals who have a disability from those individuals who do not. The paper begins by describing that I call ‘a Unified Concept View of Disability’ and the role that such a view plays in debates about the nature of disability. After considering reasons to think that our concept of disability is not unified in the way that the Unified Concept View assumes, I outline what a non-unified approach to disability might look like. The paper concludes by considering implications of rejecting the Unified Concept View of disability.

This chapter canvases a number of ways that issues surrounding disability intersect with social epistemology. We begin with a discussion of how social epistemology as a field and debates concerning epistemic injustice in particular would benefit from further (a) engaging the fields of disability studies and philosophy of disability and (b) more directly addressing the problem of ableism. In section two, we turn to issues of testimony, “intuitive horribleness,” and their relationship to debates concerning disability and well-being. We address how the regular lack of uptake of disabled people’s testimony can lead to a number of structural rather than merely individual epistemic injustices, and we also consider how the very nature of some disabilities make testimonial issues more complicated. We conclude by discussing various norms of social interaction and how they can systematically disadvantage Autistic people in particular with respect to all the issues discussed herein.

This chapter examines public policy as it applies to public education for students with disabilities in the United States. Public policy with respect to ‘special education’ has made important strides in the past half century and is not unjust in the explicit ways that it used to be. However, current US public special education policy is still unjust insofar as it is an instance of what Guy Adams and Danny Balfour call ‘administrative evil.’ Addressing this administrative evil will require both procedural changes in special education and addressing the ‘micropolitics’ of individualized educational plan meetings.

This paper argues that human agency is not simply a function of intrinsic properties about the agent, but that agency instead depends on the ecology that the agent is in. In particular, the paper examines ways that disabilities affect agency and shows how, by paying deliberate attention to structuring the social environment around people with disabilities, we can mitigate some of the agential impact of those disabilities. The paper then argues that the impact of one’s social environment on agency isn’t restricted only to those agents that have disabilities, but also characterizes all human agency. All of our agency is environmentally dependent.

In this paper, I explore some of the motivations behind John Martin Fischer's semi-compatibilism. Particularly, I look at three reasons Fischer gives for preferring semi-compatibilism to libertarianism. I argue that the first two of these motivations are in tension with each other: the more one is moved by the first motivation, the less one can appeal to the second, and vice versa. I then argue that Fischer's third motivation ought not move anyone to prefer Fischer's semi-compatibilist picture to any of the leading contemporary libertarian theories. Finally, I make some methodological comments about the role intuitions play in Fischer's project.