In God, Time, and Knowledge, William Hasker presents a powerful argument against “theological compatibilism,” which, in this context, refers to the view that divine foreknowledge is compatible with libertarian free will. In this paper I show that Hasker’s views on free will, as expressed in God, Time, and Knowledge, are inconsistent with his own account of hard facts. I then consider four ways to remove the inconsistency and argue that the first two are untenable for the libertarian, while the remaining two leave the theological compatibilist in a good position to respond to the dilemma of freedom and foreknowledge. Along the way, I attempt to defuse Hasker’s argument that Anselmian eternalism is “fatal to libertarian free will.”

Take naturalism to be the idea that there is no such person as God or anything like God. Many philosophers hold that naturalism can accommodate serious moral realism. Many philosophers (and many of the same philosophers) also believe that moral properties supervene on non-moral properties, and even on naturalistic properties (where a naturalistic property is one such that its exemplification is compatible with naturalism). I agree that they do thus supervene, and argue that this makes trouble for anyone hoping to argue that naturalism can accommodate morality.

Wes Morriston argues that even if we take an endless series of events to be merely potentially, rather than actually, infinite, still no distinction between a beginningless and an endless series of events has been established which is relevant to arguments against the metaphysical possibility of an actually infinite number of things: if a beginningless series is impossible, so is an endless series. The success of Morriston’s argument, however, comes to depend on rejecting the characterization of an endless series of events as a potential infinite. It turns out that according to his own analysis it is vitally relevant whether the series of events is potentially, as opposed to actually, infinite. If it is reasonable to maintain that an endless series of events is potentially infinite while a beginningless series is actually infinite, then a relevant distinction has been established for any person who thinks that an actual infinite cannot exist.

Many Christians believe that, because of divine grace, any person who repents of sin, accepts Christianity, and has genuinely authentic faith in God is forgiven for her sins and spared completely of the torments of hell. I argue that this idea is difficult to reconcile with certain Christian doctrines and common, though not universal, moral intuitions about wrongdoing and punishment. The main steps are as follows. The violation of an obligation creates a moral debt that requires correction by compensation, punishment, and/or forgiveness; a wrong that is never punished, compensated, or forgiven perpetuates a continuing injustice by leaving a debt unpaid. If it is true that one person’s forgiveness cannot release the wrongdoer of a moral debt owed to someone else, then God’s forgiveness cannot release a wrongdoer from the moral debts she owes to human victims of her wrongs. Something must be done, as a moral matter, to deal with those existing moral debts before a saved sinner can enjoy the eternal bliss promised to the faithful.

Eric Wielenberg and I agree that basic moral truths are necessarily true. But Wielenberg thinks that, because these truths are necessary, they require no explanation, and I do not: some basic moral truths are not self-explanatory. I argue that Wielenberg’s reasons for thinking that my justification of that claim is inadequate are ultimately unconvincing.

One of the principal lines of argument deployed by the friends of the kalām cosmological argument against the possibility of a beginningless series of events is a quite general argument against the possibility of an actual infinite. The principal thesis of the present paper is that if this argument worked as advertised, parallel considerations would force us to conclude, not merely that a series of discrete, successive events must have a first member, but also that such a series must have a final member. Anyone who thinks that an endless series of events is possible must therefore reject this popular line of argument against the possibility of an actual infinite.

Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument against the existence of God has generated a great deal of discussion. One prominent line of reply has been the idea that God refrains from making His existence more apparent in order to safeguard our moral freedom. Schellenberg has provided extensive counter-replies to this idea. My goal here is to pursue an alternate line of response, though one that still makes some reference to the importance of free-will. It will be argued that God may remain temporarily ‘hidden’ to some people not merely in order to allow their free moral choice, but because His proper allowance of such choice has led to a great deal of suffering on the part of the victims of wicked choices. If His existence were constantly obvious to those victims, even in the midst of their victimization, many of them would be led to an attitude of enmity, even hatred, toward God.

Arius maintains that the Father must produce the Son without any pre-existing ingredients (ex nihilo) because no such ingredients are available to the Father. Athanasius denies this, insisting not only that the Father himself becomes an ingredient in the Son, but also that the Son inherits his divine properties from that ingredient. I argue, however, that it is difficult to explain exactly how the Son could inherit certain properties but not others from something he is not identical to, just as it is difficult to explain the precise way that a statue inherits certain properties but not others from the lump of bronze it is made from.

This article argues that Platonism provides a plausible account of wisdom, one that is especially attractive for Christians. Christian Platonism sees wisdom as conceptual understanding; it is a “knowledge of the Forms.” To be convincing this view requires us to see understanding as including an appreciation of the relations between concepts as well as the value of the possible ways of being that concepts disclose. If the Forms are Divine Ideas, then we can see why God is both supremely wise and the source of all human wisdom. The account of wisdom provided helps explain the relation between wisdom and knowledge, the connection between wisdom and emotion, and much about how wisdom is acquired. The view also helps explain why someone who lacks extensive propositional knowledge can still be wise, and it helps us see why an understanding of the Biblical narrative and participation in the life of the Church can be important aids in the development of wisdom.

Scholars discussing Aquinas’s ethics typically understand it as largely Aristotelian, though with some differences accounted for by the differences in world­view between Aristotle and Aquinas. In this paper, I argue against this view. I show that although Aquinas recognizes the Aristotelian virtues, he thinks they are not real virtues. Instead, for Aquinas, the passions—or the suitably formulated intellectual and volitional analogues to the passions—are not only the foundation of any real ethical life but also the flowering of what is best in it.

This paper is an account of Kant’s view of the passions, and their place in the structure of moral motivation. The paper lays out the relations Kant sees be­tween feelings, inclinations, affects and passions, by looking at texts in Metaphysics of Morals, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Anthropology, and Lectures on Education. Then it discusses a famous passage in Groundwork about sympathetic inclination, and ends by proposing two ways in which Kant thinks feelings and inclinations enter into moral judgment, and two ways in which this can go wrong. This analysis involves responding to Karl Ameriks on the question of whether Kant is an internalist about moral motivation.

Religious faith is often critiqued as irrational either because its beliefs do not rise to the level of knowledge as defined by some philosophical theory or be­cause it rests on emotion rather than knowledge. Or both. Kierkegaard helps us to see how these arguments rest on a misunderstanding of all three terms: faith, reason, and emotion.

The paper begins by challenging a received view of Descartes as preoccupied with scepticism and setting out entirely on his own to build up everything from scratch. In reality, his procedure in the Meditations presupposes trust in the mind’s reliable powers of rational intuition. God, the source of those powers, is never fully eclipsed by the darkness of doubt. The second section establishes some common links between the approach taken by Descartes in the Meditations and the ‘faith seeking understanding’ tradition. So far from insisting on the autonomy and independence of human inquiry, Descartes sees the meditator as finding freedom in spontaneous submission to both the natural light of reason and also the supernatural light of faith. The approach to God which lies at the heart of the Meditations in some ways resembles a direct cognitive encounter as much as a formal demonstrative proof. The paper’s final section deals with Descartes’ ‘incarnational’ theodicy of the passions. Lacking the clarity and transparency of intellectual perceptions, the passions can often lead to confusion and error. Nevertheless they are part of the (divinely bestowed) endowment of our human nature, which is not a pure intellect plugged into a machine, but a genuine psycho-physical unity. The passions can serve as valued auxiliaries of reason in the search for goodness and truth.

This essay remarks upon a seeming paradox in the philosophical anthropology of Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821). He presents a traditional Platonic asymmetry of reason and the passions. This is put to the service of an Origenistic-universalistic theology that revolves around questions of guilt, punishment and redemption and a theory of sacrifice. Maistre is far from being the irrationalist that many political theorists observe, even if he presents an antagonistic relationship between reason and passions, the rational self and its desires. The apparently grim and sanguinary Platonism of the Savoyard Count can be neatly compared with Kant and contrasted with Hume’s sanguine, if not breezy, view of reason as a slave to the passions.

What is the best model of emotion if we are to reach a good understanding of the role of emotion in religious life? I begin by setting out a simple model of emotion, based on a paradigm emotional experience of fear of an immediate threat in one’s environment. I argue that the simple model neglects many of the complexities of our emotional lives, including in particular the complexities that one finds with the intellectual emotions. I then discuss how our dispositions to have these kinds of emotions, which are part of what it is to be a virtuous intellectual enquirer, are subject to vicissitudes, in particular brought about by depression, apathy and other damaging changes to our psychic economy. These changes can flatten affect, so that one’s intellectual life goes cold on one. Finally, I commend the idea of applying this model of intellectual emotion onto religious emotion.

There are two connected illusions which have become very common today. The first consists in marking a very sharp distinction between reason and faith—even to the point of defining faith as believing without good reason! The second is to take as a model of rationality what we might call “disengaged” reason. One illusion exaggerates the capacities of “reason alone” (allusion to Kant intended); the second sees reason as essentially “dispassionate.” Moreover, the two are closely linked. This paper argues against both, while exploring the link.

This essay describes and commends the treatment of tears and weeping in Augustine’s Confessions. It shows that Augustine depicts these acts as communicative of a particular judgment about the way things are; and that he understands these acts as a species of confession appropriate to the human condition. To become, or attempt to become, the kind of person who does not weep is to distance oneself from God; Augustine therefore commends weeping to Christians as a mode of establishing intimacy with God.

At least since Robert Adams’s “A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness” in 1973, there has been a renewed interest in divine commandtheory (DCT), with many variations currently on offer. Despite these recent developments, Mark Murphy has argued that DCT still faces the fundamental problem of explaining the nature and ground of God’s authority. In response to this problem, Murphy has recently offered an alternative explanation of divine authority based on the idea of consenting to obey God’s commands. I argue that although Murphy’s innovative account fails as he presents it, it can be made to work.

My central claim in this paper is that Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling is governed by the basic aim to articulate a real dilemma, and to elicit its proper recognition as such. I begin by indicating how Kierkegaard’s works are shaped in general by this aim, and what the aim involves. I then show how the dilemmaticstructure of Fear and Trembling is obscured in a recent dispute between Michelle Kosch and John Lippitt regarding the basic aims and upshot of the book. Finally, I consider two critical questions: Why does Kierkegaard present his dilemmatic reasoning in the form of a “dialectical lyric”? And why does he write a book that aims only to articulate a dilemma, and not also to resolve it?