•  426
    Hylomorphism and Design
    Modern Schoolman 89 (3-4): 155-180. 2012.
    Aquinas’s Fifth Way is usually taken to be an adumbration of Paley-like design arguments. Paley-like design arguments have fallen on hard times over the past few centuries, and most contemporary defenders of design arguments in support of theism favor some version of the fine-tuning argument. But fine-tuning designarguments, like Paley’s design argument, are consistent with atomism. And all such arguments are vulnerable to the objection that, given a long enough stretch of time and a sufficient …Read more
  •  88
    The Argument from Wholes
    Faith and Philosophy 30 (2): 138-158. 2013.
    All wholes are made by an intelligent agent; some wholes were not made by an embodied agent; so, some things made by an intelligent agent were not made by an embodied agent. Such was the basic argument for God’s existence defended by Udayana, the greatest of the Nyāya-Vaiśeika philosophers, in his Kiraṇāvalī. Our paper explicates this argument and highlights its merits.
  •  78
    The defensibility of zoroastrian dualism
    Religious Studies 46 (2): 185-205. 2010.
    Contemporary philosophical discussion of religion neglects dualistic religions: although Manichaeism from time to time is accorded mention, Zoroastrianism, a more plausible form of religious dualism, is almost entirely ignored. We seek to change this state of affairs. To this end we (1) present the basic tenets of Zoroastrian dualism, (2) argue that objections to the Zoroastrian conception of God are less strong than typically imagined, (3) argue that objections to the Zoroastrian conception of …Read more
  •  56
    Must God Create?
    Faith and Philosophy 12 (3): 321-341. 1995.
    In this paper we evaluate two sets of theistic arguments against the traditional position that Cod created with absolute freedom. The first set features several variations of Leibniz’s basic proof that Cod must create the best possible world. The arguments in the second set base the claim that Cod must create on the Platonic or Dionysian principle that goodness is essentially self-diffusive. We argue that neither the Leibnizian nor the Dionysian arguments are successful.
  •  50
    Towards a Robust Hylomorphism
    Studia Neoaristotelica 13 (1): 5-43. 2016.
    Over the past fi fty years or so analytic philosophers have developed accounts of the nature of material objects that can plausibly be described as neo-Aristotelian. We argue that what we term non-robust neo-Aristotelian accounts of hylomorphism fail: if hylomorphism is true, then some species of robust hylomorphism is true. In Section 2 we explain what we take non-robust and robust hylomorphism to be and distinguish two species of non-robust hylomorphism. In Section 3 we examine Aquinas’s defin…Read more
  •  48
  •  19
    Does God Will Evil?
    with Thomas D. Sullivan
    The Monist 80 (4). 1997.
  •  16
    God Does Not Harden Hearts
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 67 119-134. 1993.
  •  12
    Response
    with Thomas D. Sullivan, Michael Torre, Russell Pannier, and John Haldane
    Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 5 (2): 163-183. 2002.
  •  8
    Introduction
    Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 5 (2): 157-159. 2002.
  •  7
    Preface: Responding to the Call of Faith and Reason
    Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 2 (3): 5-10. 1999.
  •  7
    Maximal Wickedness vs. Maximal Goodness
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 71 91-99. 1997.
  •  6
    The Existential Problem of Evil
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 68 229-246. 1994.
  •  6
    Introduction
    Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 5 (1): 156-159. 2002.
  •  6
    Introduction
    Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 5 (2): 157-159. 2002.
  •  6
    Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy
    Philosophia Christi 11 (1): 249-252. 2009.
  •  5
    Evil, God, and the Agnostic Inquirer
    Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 2 (1): 127-152. 1999.
  •  5
    Introduction
    Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 5 (3): 207-209. 2002.
  •  5
    Response
    Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 5 (2): 163-183. 2002.
  •  3
    Grading Worlds
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 70 149-161. 1996.
  •  2
    Introduction
    Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 5 (3): 207-209. 2002.
  •  2
    1 Introduction
    Logos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 5 (3). 2002.
  •  2
    Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy (review)
    Philosophia Christi 11 (1): 249-252. 2009.
  •  1
    Introduction
    Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 5 (1): 156-159. 2002.
  • Foundations of Theodicy: Is There a Criterion of Goodness for Worlds?
    Dissertation, University of Minnesota. 1984.
    The key thesis of this dissertation is: There is no criterion of goodness for worlds. In saying that we cannot grade worlds in terms of goodness, I am not making the claim that our perspectives are too narrow, too confined, for us to judge the world. It is true that they are narrow: we see little of the past or the future of the world, or of its spatial vastness; and our intellectural powers, which must be exercised for investigation and judgment, are limited. But even were our perspectives and …Read more
  • Revelation and miracles
    In Charles Taliaferro & Chad V. Meister (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Philosophical Theology, Cambridge University Press. 2010.