•  2
    God Responds to Prayer
    In Michael L. Peterson (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, Blackwell. pp. 242-254. 2003.
  • The Second Leibnizian Labyrinth: Psychology, Theology, and Freedom
    Dissertation, University of Notre Dame. 1991.
    During the first half of the twentieth century most Leibniz scholarship followed what has come to be the "received" interpretation of Leibniz in the English speaking world. This interpretation, developed by Bertrand Russell, is distinguished by the fact that it denies the importance of Leibniz's theological interests to his philosophical system. In this dissertation I show that Leibniz's theological beliefs cannot be ignored in trying to understand his philosophical views. I specifically look at…Read more
  •  12
    Heaven and Hell
    In Michael J. Murray (ed.), Reason for the Hope Within, Eerdmans. pp. 289--317. 1999.
  •  79
    The belief that God responds to prayer is widespread. According to a recent Newsweek survey 87% of Americans said that they believe that God answers prayers. In fact, they believe so heartily in the efficacy of prayer that nearly one third of those polled said that they prayed to God more than once a day. What is even more interesting about this belief among ordinary Americans is that it has been denied by so many theologians. One might think such denials would be found only among contemporary l…Read more
  •  248
    Recent non-representationalists and metaphysical anti-realists have argued that the “Enlightenment notion” of a “God’s eye” point of view of the world is unsustainable. Deployment of conceptual schemes and/or intersubjective assent both constitute the world and fix the truth value of our statements about it. Many theists, on the contrary, hold an equally extreme realist position according to which God has a view of the world as it is “in itself" which provides an exhaustive description of the wo…Read more
  •  200
    And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
  •  18
    Divine Evil?: The Moral Character of the God of Abraham (edited book)
    Oxford University Press UK. 2010.
    Adherents of the Abrahamic religions have traditionally held that God is morally perfect and unconditionally deserving of devotion, obedience, love, and worship. The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures tell us that God is compassionate, merciful, and just. As is well-known, however, these same scriptures contain passages that portray God as wrathful, severely punitive, and jealous. Critics furthermore argue that the God of these scriptures commends bigotry, misogyny, and homophobia, condon…Read more
  •  7
    An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion
    Cambridge University Press. 2008.
    An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion provides a broad overview of the topics which are at the forefront of discussion in contemporary philosophy of religion. Prominent views and arguments from both historical and contemporary authors are discussed and analyzed. The book treats all of the central topics in the field, including the coherence of the divine attributes, theistic and atheistic arguments, faith and reason, religion and ethics, miracles, human freedom and divine providence, sci…Read more
  •  5
    Leibniz on Divine Foreknowledge of Future Contingents and Human Freedom
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (1): 75-108. 1995.
    The Prevolitional Condition: The subjunctive conditionals of human freedom known by God must have their truth value prior to any free decree of God, i.e., be known prevolitionally.
  •  82
    Over the last decade a handful of cognitive models of religious belief have begun to coalesce in the literature. Attempts to offer “scientific explanations of religious belief ” are nothing new, stretching back at least as far as David Hume, and perhaps as far back as Cicero. What is also not new is a belief that scientific explanations of religious belief serve in some way to undermine the justification for those beliefs.
  •  3
    The Evolution of Religion: Adaptationist Accounts
    In Melville Y. Stewart (ed.), Science and Religion in Dialogue, Wiley-blackwell. 2010.
    This chapter contains sections titled: I Introduction II One Preliminary III Adaptationist Theories IV Punishment Theories V Commitment Signaling VI Group Selection V Conclusion Notes References.
  •  12
    ``Three Versions of Universalism"
    Faith and Philosophy 16 (1): 55--68. 1999.
    In recent years a number of sophisticated versions of soteriological universalism have appeared in the literature. In this essay I offer some critical retlections them. In particular, I argue that universalism offers no explanation for the fact that God puts human creatures through the earthly life, and that if there is no such reason then the earthly life and the evil it contains are both gratuitous. Finally, I argue that universalists are obliged to deny that human beings have a centrally impo…Read more
  •  4
    Intellect, Will, and Freedom
    The Leibniz Review 6 25-59. 1996.
    Among the many puzzling features of Leibniz’s philosophy, none has received more attention in the recent literature than his position on freedom. Leibniz makes his views on freedom a central theme in his philosophical writings from early in his career until its close. And yet while significant efforts have been concentrated on decoding his views on this issue, much of the discussion has focused on only one facet of Leibniz’s treatment of it. I have argued elsewhere that there are at least three …Read more
  •  14
    Reason for the Hope Within (edited book)
    Eerdmans. 1999.
    This volume is required reading for those seeking a compelling defense of the Christian faith.
  •  6
    Increasingly, the mind is being treated as a fit subject for scientific inquiry. As cognitive science and empirical psychology strive to uncover the mind's secrets, it is fitting to inquire as to what distinctive role is left for philosophy in the study of mind. This collection, which includes contributions by some of the leading scholars in the field, offers a rich variety of perspectives on this issue. Topics addressed include: the place of a priori inquiry in philosophy of mind, moral psychol…Read more
  •  5
    Problems of and explanations for evil -- Neo-cartesianism -- Animal suffering and the fall -- Nobility, flourishing, and immortality : animal pain and animal well-being -- Natural evil, nomic regularity, and animal suffering -- Chaos, order, and evolution -- Combining CDs.
  •  164
    Mere Theistic Evolution
    Philosophia Christi 22 (1): 7-41. 2020.
    A key takeaway from the recent volume Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique is that no version of theistic evolution that adheres largely to consensus views in biology is a plausible option for orthodox Christians. In this paper we argue that this is false: contrary to the arguments in the volume, evolutionary theory, properly understood, is perfectly compatible with traditional Christian commitments. In addition, we argue that the lines between Intelligent De…Read more
  •  1
    Nature red in tooth and claw: theism and the problem of animal suffering
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 66 (3): 173-177. 2009.
  •  5
    Dissertation on Predestination and Grace (edited book)
    Yale University Press. 2011.
    In this book G. W. Leibniz presents not only his reflections on predestination and election but also a more detailed account of the problem of evil than is found in any of his other works apart from the _Theodicy_. Surprisingly, his _Dissertation on Predestination and Grace_ has never before been published in any form. Michael J. Murray's project of translating, editing, and providing commentary for the volume will therefore attract great interest among scholars and students of Leibniz's philoso…Read more
  •  1
    Leibniz‐ By Nicholas Jolley
    Philosophical Books 49 (4): 375-376. 2008.
  •  9
    Evolutionary Accounts of Religion: Explaining or Explaining Away
    In Melville Y. Stewart (ed.), Science and Religion in Dialogue, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 472--478. 2010.
    This chapter contains sections titled: * Notes * References
  •  4
    You can't always get what you want: Evolution and true beliefs
    with Jeffrey P. Schloss
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32 (6): 533-534. 2009.
    McKay & Dennett (M&D) convincingly argue against many proposals for adaptively functioning misbelief, but the conclusion that true beliefs are generally adaptive does not follow. Adaptive misbeliefs may be few in kind but many in number; maladaptive misbeliefs may routinely elude selective pruning; reproductively neutral misbeliefs may abound; and adaptively grounded beliefs may reliably covary with but not truthfully represent reality
  •  6
    Ask and it will be given to you: Michael J. Murray and Kurt Meyers
    Religious Studies 30 (3): 311-330. 1994.
    Consider the following situation. It is the first day of school, and the new third-grade students file into the classroom to be shown to their seats for the coming year. As they enter, the third-grade teacher notices one small boy who is particularly unkempt. He looks to be in desperate need of bathing, and his clothes are dirty, torn and tight-fitting. During recess, the teacher pulls aside the boy's previous teacher and asks about his wretched condition. The other teacher informs her that he a…Read more
  •  66
    Theodicy
    In Thomas P. Flint & Michael C. Rea (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophical theology, Oxford University Press. 2008.
    From Leibniz's time until the mid-1970s, the word ‘theodicy’ was used to describe attempts to explain God's permission of evil. Since the mid-1970s, however, it has taken on a more refined sense among philosophers of religion – a change that can be attributed to Alvin Plantinga's book God, Freedom and Evil. In this work, Plantinga distinguishes between two types of explanations of evil that theists might construct. The first type is offered in response to arguments that the coexistence of God an…Read more
  •  8
    Natural Providence
    Faith and Philosophy 23 (3): 337-341. 2006.
  •  6
    Despite Russell’s protestations to the contrary, it has become evident that Leibniz had more than a passing interest in a number of the problems plaguing seventeenth century philosophical theology. In published work, correspondence, and private notes, Leibniz spends significant energy sorting through numerous solutions to the standard problems. Not least among these was the perennial problem of how to reconcile divine foreknowledge and providence and human freedom. In this essay I discuss how Le…Read more
  •  3
    Leibniz (review)
    Faith and Philosophy 13 (3): 426-435. 1996.