Philosophia Christi

In this essay, I assess Timothy Blank’s “The Open Theistic Multiverse.” In his article, Blank attempts to show that Open Theism explains how God can plan the creation of a multiverse containing creatures with libertarian freedom. I underscore some benefits of Blank’s article while arguing that, despite its strengths, his paper fails to provide a sufficient explanation of God’s precreational planning.

Advocates of eliminative materialism (EM) assure us that our current, ordinary approach to describing the mind (dubbed “folk psychology”) will eventually be eliminated, instead of reduced, by a matured neuroscience. However, once we take into account the flexibility, explanatory power, and overall sophistication of ordinary language, then the promissory note offered by eliminative materialism (EM) loses all credibility. To bolster the preceding claim, we present three original problems for EM: (1) the accountability problem, (2) the substitution problem, and (3) the discourse dependence problem.

Have you wondered how your students or friends simultaneously deny moral facts yet accept the universal wrongness of bullying, sexual assault, or greed? Dallas Willard’s much anticipated final philosophical work offers an incisive analysis of and solution to this phenomenon. Here I provide a brief overview of Willard’s main argument for how moral knowledge disappeared and has thereby become publicly unavailable for teaching it to emerging generation. We first look at what caused this “disappearance” at a social level, and then consider how have contributed to the problem. Finally, we look at Willard’s proposal for how we might recover moral knowledge, and I offer three lingering questions that may provide a springboard for those interested in extending his important project.

In a recent book, Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar, Ross Inman demonstrates the contemporary relevance of an Aristotelian approach to metaphysics and the philosophy of nature. Inman successfully applies the Aristotelian framework to a number of outstanding problems in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of physics. Inman tackles some intriguing questions about the ontological status of proper parts, questions which constitute a central focus of ongoing debate and investigation.

This article reflects on three issues: (1) the past twenty years of the Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS), (2) ideas for EPS's future, and (3) some words of advice to my younger EPS colleagues. Regarding (1), I identify four values that were central to the rebirth of the EPS and that have guided us for twenty years. Regarding (2), I issue a warning and a challenge. Regarding (3), I provide three words of advice for keeping us on course.

Christian philosophers have engaged naturalism in three main ways: (1) direct refutation; (2) systematic comparison; and (3) sustained development of compelling alternative accounts. While all of these options have value, I argue that it is (2), and especially (3), that are most likely to win converts, and that we are witnessing an encouraging strategic shift in that direction. Options (2) and (3) bring Christian philosophers into closer dialogue with their naturalistic counterparts, building mutual respect and a greater opportunity for Christian philosophers to gain a full and fair hearing. This points to a bright future for Christian philosophy.

This brief look at Christian philosophy in the United States in recent years considers both our successes and the challenges we face. It also congratulates Philosophia Christi on its excellence in the past twenty years.

This brief essay offers a congratulatory notice and reflections on the 20th anniversary of Philosophia Christi. It recalls some of Craig's early involvement with the Evangelical Philosophical Society and with the founding of Philosophia Christi.

This autobiographical article commemorates the twentieth anniversary of Philosophia Christi—the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS). I give my own personal narrative of the EPS’s influence on my life beginning in the mid-1980s as a master’s-level graduate student. This narrative then recounts my deepened involvement with the Society starting in the late 1990s, when it began going through pioneering structural and leadership changes and key developments over the past twenty years.

In this article I compare the kryptic model of the Incarnation, developed by Andrew Loke, with two other models, the “two-minds” model and the kenotic model. All three models succeed in showing the logical coherence of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and I concede that Loke’s model has some of the advantages of both of the other two, while avoiding some perceived disadvantages. However, I argue that Loke’s model also has some of the disadvantages of both of the other models. In conclusion I argue that the alleged superiority of the kryptic model over a kenotic model vanishes if one is willing to question the reliability of our a priori rational intuitions about the nature of God on the basis of a view of the divine nature that seems to fit better with the biblical picture of God.

In several recent articles and a monograph, Andrew Loke has outlined a particular model of the Incarnation, which he calls the Divine Preconscious Model (DPM). In this article I provide a critique of this model, drawing on recent work by James Arcadi in order to show that there are serious theological costs involved in adopting the DPM.

I explain why my model of the Incarnation avoids the problems with alternative models and reply to objections concerning my model’s coherence with scripture (for example, Heb. 4:15), the understanding of personhood and natures (using resources from Islamic tradition concerning Jesus’s human nature), the concrete–abstract distinction, the human soul of Christ, the lack of the unconscious in Christ, and the incompatibility with a strong sense of immutability and simplicity. I conclude that my model stays faithful to scripture and can help to secure unity in the body of Christ concerning the doctrine of the Incarnation.

Many think that Pascal’s Wager is a hopeless failure. A primary reason for this is because a number of challenging objections have been raised to the wager, including the “many-gods” objection and the “mixed strategy” objection. We argue that both objections are formal, but not substantive, problems for the wager, and that they both fail for the same reason. We then respond to additional objections to the wager. We show how a version of Pascalian reasoning succeeds, giving us a reason to pay special attention to the infinite consequences of our actions.