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1. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Craig Hazen

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2. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Greg Jesson

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Dallas Willard’s reliance on Edmund Husserl’s early works, especially The Logical Investigations, grounded his direct realism, which allowed for an epistemology that made knowledge of mind-independent reality possible. Representationalism, idealism, phenomenalism, Kantianism, and skepticism were challenged because each posits an account of experience that makes such knowledge impossible. Willard’s ontology of knowing is centered on the intentionality of consciousness wherein acquaintance with things-in-themselves allows open rational inquiry into life’s ultimate questions. This cleared the way for him to describe how one can know that God exists and how one’s character can be transformed into the character of Jesus of Nazareth.
3. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Joshua R. Farris

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As a contribution to ramified natural theology, I advance some thoughts in favor of a distinctively Cartesian variation of natural theology that lends itself to the Christian understanding of God as a mind and as personal. I propose that defenders of Cartesian natural theology, as commonly construed in much of the contemporary substance dualist literature, construe the soul as a “sign” or “pointer” to God such that we, as human persons, seem to have access to God’s nature and existence via the soul (mind) as a rationale for the world and for persons. On this basis, I respond to a common anti-Cartesian charge(s) from subjectivism. Finally, I suggest that this approach deserves further consideration concerning theological prolegomena.
4. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Brendan Sweetman

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This paper is a critical reflection and response to the religious fideism of D. Z. Phillips, and especially to recent attempts to defend this fideism. Over the course of his career, Phillips argued for a number of interesting but quite dramatic theses about religious belief, including the claim that what is sometimes called the propositional nature of religious belief is frequently misunderstood by philosophers, and that this misunderstanding involves a distortion of what religious believers are doing when they say they believe in God and engage in various religious practices. This paper explores these and other claims in the light of recent interesting attempts to defend them, especially in the work of Patrick Horn. I elaborate the distinction between the propositional and expressive dimensions of religious belief, and argue that Horn does not succeed in rescuing Phillips’s view from a number of serious philosophical objections, including the objection that theirs is a metaphorical interpretation of religion. I suggest also that Horn’s and Phillips’s fideistic versions of religious belief and religious phenomena may involve an element of self-deception, and would likely lead to people giving up their religious beliefs, or at least to their beliefs playing a decreasing role in their everyday lives.
5. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Walter Schultz

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“The actual world” is a familiar term in possible-worlds discourse. A desirable account of the nature and structure of the actual world that coheres with the doctrine of creation ex nihilo will (1) include a theory of truth-making, (2) account for the dynamics of the universe in relation to the doctrine of creation, (3) say how so-called abstract objects are related to God, and (4) preclude the Russell Paradox. By emending Alvin Plantinga’s theistic modal realism, this paper recovers a view of the actual world as God’s plan and briefly states how the metaphysical theory that results meets these desiderata.
6. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
W. David Beck, Max Andrews

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Recent developments in quantum physics postulate the existence of some form of multiverse, often considered inimical to theism. We argue that a cosmology of many worlds is not novel either to philosophy or to theism. The multiverse is not a monolithic concept and we refer to and use the four levels of categorization proposed by Max Tegmark. We trace the idea of a multiverse back to the Milesians and Epicureans in order to initially demonstrate its use of a plenitude argument. We then examine the argument for possible compatibility based on a theistic principle of plenitude in three specifically Christian theists: Origen, Thomas Aquinas, and G. W. Leibniz. We conclude that this argument is sustainable so that if any level of the multiverse actually exists then it is harmonious with theism, and we argue that its fit is most successful if a multiverse is considered as a single possible world. We call this view Thomistic modal realism.
7. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
R. T. Mullins

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Four-dimensionalism and eternalism are theories on time, change, and persistence. Christian philosophers and theologians have adopted four-dimensional eternalism for various reasons. In this paper I shall attempt to argue that four-dimensional eternalism conflicts with Christian thought. Section I will lay out two varieties of four-dimensionalism—perdurantism and stage theory—along with the typically associated ontologies of time of eternalism and growing block. I shall contrast this with presentism and endurantism. Section II will look at some of the purported theological benefits of adopting four-dimensionalism and eternalism. Section III will examine arguments against four-dimensional eternalism from the problem of evil. Section IV will argue that four-dimensional eternalism causes problems for Christian eschatology.
8. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Kenneth Hochstetter

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In the metaphysics or persistence, some hold to “four dimensionalism,” the doctrine that temporally extended things have temporal parts. Two four dimensionalists accounts are perdurantism and stage theory. In this paper I assume that these exhaust the possible ways of being a four dimensionalist. I argue that a Christian should not be a four-dimensionalist because four-dimensionalism implies that persons cannot act. The resurrection of Jesus is an act. Thus, four-dimensionalism implies Jesus did not rise from the dead. But, Christianity stands on the resurrection of Jesus. Therefore, a Christian should not be a four-dimensionalist.
9. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Mark S. McLeod-Harrison

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Many Christians take an exclusivist stance on the nature and access of salvation. This essay explores the realist assumptions often found behind such exclusivist views and presents an alternative understanding of Christian salvation that is inclusivistic, irrealistic, and pluralistic.

philosophical notes

10. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Joshua Lee Harris

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This paper is a response to an article in Philosophia Christi by W. Paul Franks and Richard B. Davis entitled “Against a Postmodern Epistemology.” In this article, the authors offer a critique of James K. A. Smith. I respond to three of their particular criticisms in the following manner: (1) by explaining the motivations behind rejecting a modern “correspondence theory of truth”; (2) revealing what I take to be an invalid inference on the topic of scripture and interpretation; and (3) offering an alternative account of the “universality” of the gospel.
11. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Richard B. Davis, W. Paul Franks

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In this paper we respond to three objections raised by Joshua Harris to our article, “Against a Postmodern Pentecostal Epistemology,” in which we express misgivings about the conjunction of Pentecostalism with James K. A. Smith’s postmodern, story-based epistemology. According to Harris, our critique (1) problematically assumes a correspondence theory of truth, (2) invalidly concludes that “Derrida’s Axiom” conflicts with “Peter’s Axiom,” and (3) fails to consider an alternative account of the universality of Christian truth claims. We argue that Harris’s objections either demonstrate a deficient interpretation of the relevant biblical passages or are not directed at us at all.
12. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
J. Caleb Clanton

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William Rowe’s criticism of the cosmological argument takes aim at the argument’s reliance on the principle of sufficient reason. In this short paper, I outline out how C. S. Peirce’s insights regarding abductive reasoning might be useful in defending the cosmological argument against Rowe’s worry concerning the principle of sufficient reason and the role it plays in the argument.
13. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Nathan D. Shannon

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Brannon Ellis’s book Calvin, Classical Trinitarianism, and the Aseity of the Son is a detailed historical theological study of Calvin’s defense of the doctrine of the self-existence of the person of the Son. The text emphasizes and endorses Calvin’s defense of the necessity and authority of special revelation and the biblical credentials of a distinction between two ways of speaking of God: nonrelatively as to the divine essence, and relatively as to the persons. With these commitments in mind, Calvin’s defense of the aseity of the Son brings the full authority of Trinitarian confession to bear on philosophical theology and implicates at a methodological level the rationalistic tendencies of Thomistic natural theology and perfect being theology.

book reviews

14. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Stewart Goetz

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15. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Kegan J. Shaw

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16. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Mihretu P. Guta

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17. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Adam Omelianchuk

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18. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1
Michael T. McFall

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19. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1

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