Philosophia Christi

Volume 21, Issue 1, 2019

20th Anniversary Edition

The Nature of Skeptical Theism
Answering Nonstandard Objections to Skeptical Theism

Skeptical theism is a popular response to arguments from evil. Recently, Matthew A. Benton, John Hawthorne, and Yoaav Isaacs have argued that the theses that ground skeptical theism are either false or limited in scope. In this article, I show that their objections rest on dubious assumptions about the nature of skeptical theism. Along the way, I develop and clarify the ambiguous parts of skeptical theism. The upshot of this is that—once the nature of skeptical theism is made clearer—it is far more difficult to resist.