•  556
    Revelation Through Concealment: Kabbalistic Responses to God’s Hiddenness
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12 (2): 89-108. 2020.
    John Schellenberg presents an argument for atheism according to which theism would be easy to believe, if true. Since theism isn’t easy to believe, it must be false. In this paper, I argue that Kabbalistic Judaism has the resources to bypass this argument completely. The paper also explores a stream of Kabbalistic advice that the tradition offers to people of faith for those times at which God appears to us to be hidden.
  •  458
    Nothing Else
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 11 (2): 91-110. 2019.
    "Jewish Nothing-elsism" is the school of thought according to which there is nothing else besides God. This school is sometimes and erroneously interpreted as pantheistic or acosmic. In this paper I argue that Jewish Nothing-elsism is better interpreted as a form of “panentheistic priority holism”, and still better interpreted as a form of “idealistic priority monism”. On this final interpretation, Jewish Nothing-elsism is neither pantheist, panentheist, nor acosmic. Jewish Nothing-elsism is Has…Read more
  •  195
    The Promise of a New Past
    Philosophers' Imprint 17 1-25. 2017.
    In light of Jewish tradition and the metaphysics of time, we argue that God can and will change the past. The argument makes for a new answer to the problem of evil and a new theory of atonement.
  •  159
    Abraham’s Empty Altars
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (4). 2022.
    In this paper I examine the ritual life of Abraham as it is presented in the book of Genesis. Paying close attention to the language of the narrative, I try to reconstruct the evolving philosophical theology that seems to underlie the modes of worship that Abraham develops over time. Read in this light, the life of Abraham can help us to rethink the extent to which theistic religiosity requires a personal God, and the extent to which it can survive in the face of a more austere impersonal theolo…Read more
  •  122
    Why so negative about negative theology? The search for a plantinga-proof apophaticism
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 76 (3): 259-275. 2014.
    In his warranted christian belief, Alvin Plantinga launches a forceful attack on apophaticism, the view that God is in some sense or other beyond description. This paper explores his attack before searching for a Plantinga-proof formulation of apophaticism
  •  107
    The epistemology of religiosity: an Orthodox Jewish perspective
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 74 (3): 315-332. 2013.
    This paper focusses on the Rabbinic suggestion that the attitude of awe, rather than any particular belief, lies at the heart of religiosity. On the basis of these Rabbinic sources, and others, the paper puts forward three theses: (1) that belief is not a sufficiently absorbing epistemic attitude to bear towards the truths of religion; (2) that much of our religious knowledge isn’t mediated via belief; and (3) that make-believe is sometimes more important, in the cultivation of religiosity than …Read more
  •  104
    The first part of the paper presents three little arguments from theism to idealism. The second part employs these arguments to make sense of a puzzling doctrine of Jewish mysticism: the doctrine of divine contraction (heb. tzimtzum).
  •  96
    Russell and Bradley: Rehabilitating the Creation Narrative of Analytic Philosophy
    Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 5 (7). 2017.
    According to Stewart Candlish, Russell and Moore had misunderstood F. H. Bradley’s monism. According to Jonathan Schaffer, they had misunderstood monism more generally. A key thread of the creation narrative of analytic philosophy, according to which Russell and Moore successfully undermined monism to give rise to a new movement is, therefore, in doubt. In this paper, I defend the standard narrative against those who seek to revise it.
  •  81
    Would this paper exist if I hadn’t written it?
    Philosophical Studies 172 (11): 3059-3080. 2015.
    This paper wants to know whether it would exist, or could exist, in worlds in which I didn't write it. Before we can answer this question, we first of all have to inquire as to what, exactly, this paper is. After exploring two forms of Platonism, and a theory that defines literary works in terms of events, I shall argue that the term ‘this paper’ is actually infected with ambiguity. Does this paper need me? It depends upon what you mean by ‘this paper’. I lay out the options for what you might m…Read more
  •  76
    Pascal, Pascalberg, and friends
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 87 (1): 109-130. 2020.
    Pascal’s wager has to face the many gods objection. The wager goes wrong when it asks us to chose between Christianity and atheism, as if there are no other options. Some have argued that we’re entitled to dismiss exotic, bizarre, or subjectively unappealing religions from the scope of the wager. But they have provided no satisfying justification for such a radical wager-saving dispensation. This paper fills that dialectical gap. It argues that some agents are blameless or even praiseworthy for …Read more
  •  58
    An Advertisement of a Promise: God and the Hyper-past
    Journal of Analytic Theology 5 629-636. 2017.
  •  41
    Pascal’s wager faces serious criticisms and is generally considered unconvincing. We argue that it can make a comeback powered by an unlikely ally: postmodernism. If one denies the existence of objective facts (e.g. about God or His relation to the world), then various non-theological considerations should come to the fore when considering the rationality of religious commitment and the choice of education for one’s children. In fact, we shall argue that, if one genuinely cares about one’s child…Read more
  •  33
    Will I get a job? Contextualism, belief, and faith
    Synthese 199 (3-4): 5769-5790. 2021.
    Does faith require belief? “Belief-plus” accounts of faith say yes. “Non-doxastic” accounts say no but tend to place a “no-disbelief constraint” on faith. Both sides, I argue, are mistaken for making belief explanatorily prior to faith. Indeed, both “faith” and “belief” have contextualist semantics, which leaves only a tenuous tie between the applications of the two words.
  •  31
    The life of faith as a work of art: a Rabbinic theology of faith
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 81 (1-2): 61-81. 2017.
    This paper argues that God, despite his Perfection, can have faith in us. The paper includes exegesis of various Midrasihc texts, so as to understand the Rabbinic claim that God manifested faith in creating the world. After the exegesis, the paper goes on to provide philosophical motivation for thinking that the Rabbinic claim is consistent with Perfect Being Theology, and consistent with a proper analysis of the nature of faith. Finally, the paper attempts to tie the virtue that faith can exhib…Read more
  •  31
    Dormant Dispositions, Agent Value, and the Trinity
    with Dale Tuggy
    Journal of Analytic Theology 7 (1): 142-155. 2019.
    In this paper we argue that the moral value of an agent is determined solely by their dispositions to act intentionally and freely. We then put this conclusion to work. It resolves a putative moral paradox first posed by Saul Smilansky, and it undermines a prominent line of argument for a variety of Trinitarian theology. Finally, we derive our conclusion about the moral worth of agents not only from our initial series of thought experiments, but also from Abrahamic theism itself. This means that…Read more
  •  30
    The Ashes of Isaac and the Nature of Jewish Philosophy
    Journal of Analytic Theology 5 500-514. 2017.
  •  28
    The purpose of this paper is two-fold: to provide a philosophical justification for the counterintuitive attitude that Judaism seems to have towards proselytism; and to extend the case so as to create a general argument, applicable to all religions, against many forms of proselytism.
  •  27
    Is there a primordial Torah?
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 82 (2): 219-239. 2017.
    Is Orthodox Judaism committed to the existence of a Torah that pre-existed the world? This paper argues that Orthodoxy is so committed unless it can find compelling philosophical or theological reasons to reject the possibility of such an entity, and then to re-interpret allegorically all of the texts that speak of such a Torah. Providing an ontology of primordial texts, I argue that no compelling reason can be found to deny the existence of the primordial Torah.
  •  22
    On the Genealogy of Universals: The Metaphysical Origins of Analytic Philosophy (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 70 (281): 877-880. 2020.
    On the Genealogy of Universals: The Metaphysical Origins of Analytic Philosophy. By Macbride Fraser.
  •  17
    Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age (edited book)
    Oxford University Press, Usa. 2019.
    Since the classical period, Jewish scholars have drawn on developments in philosophy to enrich our understanding of Judaism. This methodology reached its pinnacle in the medieval period with figures like Maimonides and continued into the modern period with the likes of Rosenzweig. The explosion of Anglo-American/analytic philosophy in the twentieth century means that there is now a host of material, largely unexplored by Jewish philosophy, with which to explore, analyze, and develop the Jewish t…Read more
  •  16
    Missing, Presumed Not Dead
    Philosophia 49 (3): 1043-1050. 2020.
    In this paper, I argue that if we have reason to believe that an immaterial soul exists, then it should be presumed to be immortal. The conclusion is weaker than Socrates’ conclusion that immaterial souls must be immortal, but the argument is stronger, I claim, for having this weaker conclusion. Moreover, a presumption of immortality is significant in its own right.
  •  15
    Hebrew Philosophy or Jewish Theology? A False Dichotomy
    Journal of Analytic Theology 2 250-260. 2014.
  •  14
    On the Harmony between Epistemology and Pistology
    Australasian Philosophical Review 5 (1): 29-35. 2021.
    ABSTRACT In this paper I seek to retain many of Dormany's central claims about the excellent-making features of faith, without accepting her direct application of evidentialism to faith. In order to achieve that goal, I argue that we have to distinguish between the non-conflicting norms of epistemology and pistology. We also have to distinguish the often conflicting norms of epistemic and practical rationality.
  •  10
    Bertrand Russell and the Nature of Propositions offers the first book-length defence of the Multiple Relation Theory of Judgement (MRTJ). Although the theory was much maligned by Wittgenstein and ultimately rejected by Russell himself, Lebens shows that it provides a rich and insightful way to understand the nature of propositional content. In Part I, Lebens charts the trajectory of Russell’s thought before he adopted the MRTJ. Part II reviews the historical story of the theory: What led Russel…Read more
  •  7
    The Principles of Judaism
    Oxford University Press. 2020.
    Samuel Lebens takes the three principles of Jewish faith, as proposed by Rabbi Joseph Albo (1380-1444), in order to scrutinize and refine them with the toolkit of contemporary analytic philosophy. What could it mean for a perfect being to create a world from nothing? Could our world be anything more than a figment of God's imagination? What is the Torah? What does Judaism expect from a Messiah, and what would it mean for a world to be redeemed? These questions are explored in conversation with a…Read more
  • Thinking About Stories is a fun and thought-provoking introduction to philosophical questions about narrative fiction in its many forms, from highbrow literature to pulp fiction to the latest shows on Netflix. Written by philosophers Samuel Lebens and Tatjana von Solodkoff, it engages with fundamental questions about fiction, like: What is it? What does it give us? Does a story need a narrator? And why do sad stories make us cry if we know they aren’t real? The format of the book emulates a live…Read more