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41. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 2
Dallas Willard, Brandon Rickabaugh Orcid-ID Intentionality contra Physicalism: On the Mind’s Independence from the Body
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We argue for the mind’s independence from the body. We do so by making several moves. First, we analyze two popular kinds of reasons which have swayed many to adopt the independence of the mind from the body. Second, we advance an argument from the ontology of intentionality against the identity thesis, according to which the mind is identical to the brain. We try to show how intentionality is not reducible to or identical to the physical. Lastly, we argue that, contrary to what many materialists contend, the concept of a mind, understood as an immaterial substance, existing independently of the body is both coherent and empirically evidenced.
42. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 2
Victor Reppert Extending the Debate on the Argument from Reason: A Further Response to David K. Johnson
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In our exchange in the book, C. S. Lewis’s Christian Apologetics: Pro and Con, edited by Gregory Bassham, David Kyle Johnson argued that four naturalistic views, property dualism, the identity theory, epiphenomenalism, and eliminative materialism, can all meet the challenge posed by a C. S. Lewis–style argument from reason. I maintain that his response fails to take into account what a consistent naturalism is committed to, and that his defenses of these positions fail to put those positions in the clear.
43. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 2
Benjamin H. Arbour, Gregory E. Trickett Evil Does Not Pose Any Special Problem for Berkeleyan Idealism: An Idealist Response to John DePoe
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John DePoe takes issue with Christians who accept Berkeleyan idealism, essentially arguing that there is a special problem from evil for the Christian idealist. While DePoe’s treatment of idealism is commendable, his argument ultimately fails in one of two ways. It either (1) turns on common misunderstandings of idealism or (2) results in consequences unacceptable to Christians. In our article, we respond to DePoe’s argument by remotivating idealism, pointing out ways in which DePoe misunderstands idealists’ responses to the charge of a special problem of evil, and pointing out problems with DePoe’s proposals of materialist solutions to the problem of evil.
44. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 20 > Issue: 2
David Kyle Johnson Retiring the Argument from Reason: Another Reply to Reppert
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In C. S. Lewis’s Christian Apologetics: Pro and Con, I took the con in a debate with Victor Reppert about the soundness of Lewis’s famous “argument from reason.” Reppert then extended his argument in an article for Philosophia Christi; this article is my reply. I show that Reppert’s argument fails for three reasons. (1) It “loads the die” by falsely assuming that naturalism, by definition, can't include mental causation "on the basic level." (I provide multiple examples of naturalist theories of mind that do exactly that). (2) Physical processes can reliably produce true beliefs. And (3) reasoning isn’t necessarily mental.
45. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Angus J. L. Menuge Onward Christian Philosophers
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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.
46. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Ross D. Inman Editor’s Introduction
47. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
J. P. Moreland My Retrospective and Prospective Musings on the Evangelical Philosophical Society
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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.
48. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Stephen T. Davis Recent Christian Philosophy
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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.
49. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
C. Stephen Evans A Kenotic Theologian’s Response to Andrew Loke’s “Kryptic Model” of the Incarnation
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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.
50. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Paul Copan After Twenty Years: Personal Reflections
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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.
51. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
William Lane Craig The Evangelical Philosophical Society
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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.
52. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Oliver D. Crisp Loke’s Preconscious Christ
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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.
53. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Troy Catterson Grounding the Good: On Self-Predication, Self-Fulfilling Goals, and Moral Naturalism
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I argue that moral goodness is necessarily self-predicating. That is to say, the property of being morally good is morally good. I then argue that reductions of moral goodness to natural properties, particularly utilitarian specifications, are not necessarily self-predicating. Therefore, such reductions are not successful. Finally, I consider the possibility of defining the good as “fulfilling God’s design plan.” I show that, under an Aristotelian construal of property existence this property is provably self-predicating.
54. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Elizabeth Jackson, Andrew Rogers Salvaging Pascal’s Wager
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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.
55. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Perry Hendricks The Nature of Skeptical Theism: Answering Nonstandard Objections to Skeptical Theism
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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.
56. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Andrew Loke Reply to Panelists
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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.
57. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Travis M. Dickinson Virtuous Faith: An Evidentialist Model
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The notion of faith has been variously understood throughout the course of Christian intellectual history. It has been common to construe faith in epistemological terms, especially by critics of religious faith. In this paper, I argue that faith, especially faith that is had in the context of relationships, should be understood as an act of ventured trust. This is not to say that beliefs and the evidence for the truth of those beliefs are unimportant. Indeed, I argue that acting on the basis of good evidence is what makes faith virtuous.
58. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
Jonathan Ashbach The Phenomenological Moral Argument: A New Formulation of a Classic Theistic Defense
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The moral argument for the existence of God is a popular and rhetorically effective element of natural theology, but both its traditional ontological and epistemological forms rely upon controversial premises. This article proposes a new variant—the phenomenological moral argument, or PMA—that is exclusively empirical in form. The PMA notes several empirical aspects of moral experience (seven are discussed in the version presented here) that cohere much more naturally with a theistic than with an atheistic account of conscience’s origins. It therefore concludes that divine creation best explains the nature of moral experience, and thus, that God exists.
59. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
William Lane Craig Is Penal Substitution Unsatisfactory?
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It might be objected to penal substitutionary theories that punishing Christ could not possibly meet the demands of divine retributive justice. For punishing another person for my crimes would not serve to remove my guilt. The Anglo-American system of justice, in fact, does countenance and even endorse cases in which a substitute satisfies the demands of retributive justice. Moreover, Christ’s being divinely and voluntarily appointed to act not merely as our substitute but as our representative enables him to serve as our proxy before God, so that when he is punished, we are punished, to the satisfaction of divine justice.
60. Philosophia Christi: Volume > 21 > Issue: 1
James T. Turner, Jr. The Mind of the Spirit in the Resurrected Human: A Mereological Model of Mental Saturation
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The Scriptures suggest that Christians are to grow up into the “mind of Christ” or, as Craig Keener calls it, the “mind of the Spirit.” While there have been a few recent works that discuss how mental sharing between the human person and the divine person(s) might contribute to sanctification (for example, Alston), there are not any that discuss a mereological account of how the mental union works with reference to the bodily resurrection. Since I understand the human’s eschatological union with the divine to be the occasion of theosis, I offer in this paper a metaphysical model of at least one aspect of theosis: a part/whole relationship between the mind of a human and the mind of the Spirit, with reference to the eschatological bodily resurrection. I call the union “mental saturation.”