Faith and Philosophy

Using Pierre Hadot’s idea of “philosophy as a way of life,” I argue that Christian philosophy of religion is ultimately about the practical task of living our lives. But I contend that this task is two-fold: it is includes both theory and practice. While analytic philosophy of philosophy of religion (APR) tends to emphasize theory and continental philosophy of religion (CPR) tends to emphasize practice (admittedly, these generalizations are only true to a certain extent), APR and CPR are both part of a two-fold task. Throughout the paper, I put into question any hard distinction between theory and practice.

The inductive argument from evil contains the premise that, probably, there is gratuitous evil. According to traditional formulations, the argument for this premise involves an inference—a “noseeum” inference—from the proposition that we don’t see a good reason for some evil to the proposition that it appears that there is no good reason for that evil. One brand of skeptical theism involves using a principle—CORNEA—to block the inference. Recently, however, the common sense problem of evil threatens the relevance of these skeptical theists’ project. Proponents of the common sense problem of evil hold that there need not be any inference to justify the belief that there is gratuitous evil. Rather, someone can have non-inferential prima facie justification, or at least a pro tanto reason, for her belief that there is gratuitous evil. In this paper, I argue that the common sense problem of evil doesn’t avoid CORNEA and that CORNEA, or a reformulated version of it, helps prevent anyone from having any justification for the belief that there is gratuitous evil.

Human beings are typically regarded as having more value than sheep; they are said to bear the image of God or have unique value and dignity. But to specify what grounds this unique value proves quite difficult. Robert Adams argues that a traditional account that grounds this value in rationality will not do, since it cannot satisfy a number of desiderata. But I develop a broadly Aristotelian account of rationality and show that it can indeed account for the rich phenomena Adams points us towards. Moreover, unlike Adams’s “complex package” view, my view is able to provide a unified explanation for why these phenomena manifest human beings’ unique value.

Perfect being theologians try to fill out the concept of God by working out what it would take to be perfect—in various respects, or tout court. Jeff Speaks’s “The Method of Perfect Being Theology” raises two problems for perfect-being thinking. I reply to these.

In two recent papers, Dean Zimmerman has argued that the vagueness of ordinary physical objects poses a challenge for “garden variety” materialism (roughly, the view that the subject of conscious experiences is identical with the brain or the whole human organism), and that emergent substance dualism can deal more successfully with the problem of vagueness. In this paper I try to show that emergent dualism is vulnerable to the challenge of vagueness to the same extent as is “garden variety” materialism.

J. L. Schellenberg has formulated two versions of a new logical argument from evil, an argument he claims to be immune to Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense. The first version assumes that God created the world to model God’s goodness, and the second to share with the world the good that already existed. In either case, the good of the world, like that of God, should not require or allow any evil. I argue that the new argument, if correct, would pay a heavy price to avoid the free will defense. I then go on to show that neither version of the argument is sound. So, there is no new problem of evil.

In a recent paper, Eleonore Stump argues that Aquinas thinks the acquired virtues are “not real at all” because they do not contribute to true moral life, which she argues is the life joined to God by the infused virtues and the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit. Against this, I argue in two stages that Aquinas thinks the acquired virtues are real virtues. First, I respond to Stump’s four arguments against the reality of the acquired virtues. Second, I show four ways in which the acquired virtues contribute to the highest ethical life for Aquinas.