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10Understanding the free-will controversy: thinking through a philosophical quagmireCascade Books, an imprint of Wipf and Stock. 2022.What is free will and do humans possess it? While these questions appear simple they have tied some of our greatest minds in knots over the millennia. This little book seeks to clarify for an audience of educated non-specialists some of the issues that often arise in philosophical disputes over the existence and the nature of human free will. Beyond that, it proposes a particular solution to the puzzles. Many philosophers have argued that free will is incompatible with determinism, and many have…Read more
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4On free agency and the concept of powerPacific Philosophical Quarterly 69 (September): 241-54. 1988.
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58Quinn on divine commands and moral requirementsInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (4). 1982.
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93On the Divine Nature and the Nature of Divine FreedomFaith and Philosophy 5 (1): 3-24. 1988.In my paper, I defend a view that many would regard as self-evidently false: the view that God’s freedom, his power to act, is in no way limited by his essential properties. I divide the paper into five sections. In section i, I call attention to a special class of non-contingent propositions and try to identify an important feature of these propositions; in section ii, I provide some initial reasons. based in part upon the unique features of these special propositions, for thinking that God doe…Read more
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247On divine foreknowledge and bringing about the pastPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 46 (3): 455-469. 1986.
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14Charles Seymour, A Theodicy of Hell (Studies in Philosophy and Religion, Vol. 20) (review)International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 52 (1): 61-63. 2002.
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54The Problem of Hell (review)Review of Metaphysics 48 (2): 414-415. 1994.This is a study of the problem of hell, which is an especially difficult form of the problem of evil. Many religious traditions postulate a final separation between the righteous and the unrighteous, between those who receive eternal life and those who do not. If some never receive eternal life, but are instead either annihilated or eternally estranged from God, that would seem to be a purely gratuitous evil; as Kvanvig points out, such evil could in no way be "redressed by further good, at any …Read more
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4In an article that I wrote back in 1987,1 I sought to make some ideas then current in the philosophical literature available to a wider audience of non-philosophers. I was also very hard on John Beversluis, author of C.S. Lewis and the Search for Ra- tional Religion (1985), and even implied, perhaps with less charity than I should have manifested, that his treatment of the problem of evil failed to meet even minimal standards of philosophical competence. I fully expected, therefore, that his res…Read more
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102Craig on the Possibility of Eternal DamnationReligious Studies 28 (4). 1992.I believe that Craig's arguments for the possibility of (DT) are important for two reasons: first, because the line he takes, though unsuccessful in my opinion, is the most plausible (or least implausible) line available; and second, because he sets forth with startling clarity some of the propositions that someone who takes this line must be willing to accept. But in the end, I shall argue, he not only fails to establish that (DT) is possible; he also fails in the lesser task of trying to under…Read more
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34Why Christians Should Not Be DeterministsFaith and Philosophy 25 (3): 300-316. 2008.In response to Lynne Rudder Baker’s intriguing paper, “Why Christians Should Not Be Libertarians,” I suggest that, even if a Christian simply lets the chips fall where they may with respect to the dispute between libertarians and compatibilists, a Christian should not be a determinist. I also offer for consideration a rather controversial non-Augustinian explanation for the near universality and seeming inevitability of human sin.
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121God, Freedom, and Human AgencyFaith and Philosophy 26 (4): 378-397. 2008.I argue that, contrary to the opinion of Wes Morriston, William Rowe, and others, a supremely perfect God, if one should exist, would be the freest of all beings and would represent the clearest example of what it means to act freely. I suggest further that, if we regard human freedom as a reflection of God’s ideal freedom, we can avoid some of the pitfalls in both the standard libertarian and the standard compatibilist accounts of freewill.
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37The Topography of Divine LoveFaith and Philosophy 30 (3): 302-316. 2013.Jeff Jordan has recently challenged the idea, widely accepted among theistic philosophers, that “God’s love must be maximally extended and equally intense.” By way of a response, I suggest a way to sidestep Jordan’s argument entirely and then try to show that his own argument is multiply flawed. I thus conclude that his challenge is unsuccessful.
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69Charles Seymour, a theodicy of hell (studies in philosophy and religion, vol. 20)International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 52 (1): 61-63. 2002.
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67Theological fatalism and modal confusionInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 33 (2): 65-88. 1993.
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72Hell (review)Faith and Philosophy 12 (1): 143-148. 1995.I begin with an inconsistent set of three propositions, each of which has the following characteristic: We can find prima facie support for it in the Bible. I then classify theologians according to which proposition they reject, and I identify three different pictures of God: the Augustinian picture, the Arminian picture, and the universalist picture. Finally, I explore some hermeneutical problems and suggest a way in which those who hold the universalist picture might interpret some of the text…Read more
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93Universalism and the Supposed Oddity of Our Earthly LifeFaith and Philosophy 18 (1): 102-109. 2001.In “Three Versions of Universalism,” Michael Murray asks what purpose our earthly life might serve if universalism is true; and in this brief response, I suggesta possible answer.
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122Punishment, Forgiveness, and Divine JusticeReligious Studies 29 (2). 1993.According to a long theological tradition that stretches back at least as far as St Augustine, God's justice and mercy are distinct, and in many ways quite different, character traits. In his great epic poem, Paradise Lost, for example, John Milton goes so far as to suggest a conflict, perhaps even a contradiction, in the very being of God; he thus describes Christ's offer of himself as an atonement this way
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122Such was the innocent mind that first encountered The Problem of Pain and was exposed, for the first time, to the world of philosophical theology. Reading ",.- the book was like eating forbidden fruit; it was exhilarating but also a bit fright- ..â;, ening. For one thing, the book actually contained arguments, even arguments",,-" about God, and more importantly the arguments seemed to make sense! At the ".,'-â. small fundamentalist high school I attended, I had, to be sure, encountered ";!,'…Read more
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72Hell (review)Faith and Philosophy 12 (1): 143-148. 1995.I begin with an inconsistent set of three propositions, each of which has the following characteristic: We can find prima facie support for it in the Bible. I then classify theologians according to which proposition they reject, and I identify three different pictures of God: the Augustinian picture, the Arminian picture, and the universalist picture. Finally, I explore some hermeneutical problems and suggest a way in which those who hold the universalist picture might interpret some of the text…Read more
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29Hell (review)Faith and Philosophy 12 (1): 143-148. 1995.I begin with an inconsistent set of three propositions, each of which has the following characteristic: We can find prima facie support for it in the Bible. I then classify theologians according to which proposition they reject, and I identify three different pictures of God: the Augustinian picture, the Arminian picture, and the universalist picture. Finally, I explore some hermeneutical problems and suggest a way in which those who hold the universalist picture might interpret some of the text…Read more
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40A generalization about religious belief to which there are, I believe, few exceptions is this: The more confident one is in one's religious beliefs, the more willing one is to subject those beliefs to careful scrutiny; the less confident one is in them – the more one unconsciously fears that they cannot withstand such scrutiny – the more eager one is to find a device that would appear to protect them from careful scrutiny. And, more often than not, such a protective device will include an assaul…Read more
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104Universalism and the Greater Good: Reply to Gordon KnightFaith and Philosophy 16 (1): 102-105. 1999.Gordon Knight recently challenged my assumption, which I made for the purpose of organizing and classifying certain theological disputes, that a specific set of three propositions is logically inconsistent . In this brief rejoinder, I explain Knight’s objection and show why it rests upon a misunderstanding
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128Providence, Freedom, and Human DestinyReligious Studies 26 (2). 1990.According to some theists, God will never completely destroy moral evil or banish it from his creation entirely; instead, he will eventually confine moral evil to a specific region of his creation, a region known as hell, and those condemned to hell, having no hope of escape from it, will live out eternity in a state of estrangement from God as well as from each other. Let us call that the traditional doctrine of hell. Elsewhere I have argued that any form of theism which includes such a doctrin…Read more
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86Freedom, damnation, and the power to sin with impunityReligious Studies 37 (4): 417-434. 2001.I argue that the idea of a freely embraced eternal destiny in hell is deeply incoherent and implies, quite apart from its incoherence, that we are free both to sin with impunity and to defeat God's justice forever.