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One goodness, many goodnesses, and the Divine Ideas Imitation Theory Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-09-10 Anne Jeffrey, Thomas M. Ward
Some theories of goodness are descriptively rich: they have much to say about what makes things good. Neo-Aristotelian accounts, for instance, detail the various features that make a human being, a dog, a bee good relative to facts about those forms of life. Famously, such theories of relative goodness tend to be comparatively poor: they have little or nothing to say about what makes one kind of being
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Divine contradiction: fascinating but unpersuasive Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-09-02 Karen Kilby
This article, offered from the point of view of a non-analytic, systematic theologian, admires the freshness, clarity, and simplicity of the proposal at the heart of Beall's Divine Contradiction, while raising three objections. The first is to the style in which the book is written: I suggest that it remains far too technical to reach large parts of its intended audience. The second is to the tendency
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Divine Contradiction: replies to critics Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-09-02 Jc Beall
This is a collection of replies to critics of Divine Contradiction, each critic a symposiast in the Religious Studies symposium on said book.
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Divine Contradiction: some snippets Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-09-02 Jc Beall
Two doctrines (or axioms) of christian theology sharply distinguish christian monotheism from its traditional monotheistic siblings (viz. jewish and islamic monotheism): the incarnation of God and the triunity of God. Both doctrines, as many have long observed, face a conspicuous so-called logical problem – namely, apparent contradiction. How should the strong appearance of such fundamental contradiction
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Author's Note for Symposium on A Hidden Wisdom Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-16 Christina Van Dyke
In this brief note, I provide a concise overview of my book A Hidden Wisdom, and I highlight one aspect of each of the contributions that warrants further exploration.
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From modal collapse to moral collapse Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-15 Drew Smith
I aim in this article to contribute two points to the ongoing discussion regarding strong DDS and modal collapse. First, I will examine a recent version of the modal collapse objection formulated by R. T. Mullins, demonstrating that one can modify the argument to survive its most forceful rejoinder. Having established the cogency of Mullins's modal collapse argument, I next aim to heighten the severity
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Divine command theory and the (supposed) incoherence of self-commanding Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Jashiel Resto Quiñones
Theological voluntarism is a family of metaethical views that share the claim that deontological statuses of actions are dependent on or identical with some divine feature. Adams's version of this theistic metaethical view is a divine command theory (DCT). According to Adams's DCT, the property being-morally-obligated is identical to the property being-commanded-by-God. Thus, a natural consequence
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The evidential challenge for petitionary prayer Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Noam Oren
In the past decade, philosophers have devoted a great deal of attention to the practice of petitionary prayer. Philosophical inquiries have posed a priori problems – issues that arise from an analytical investigation of the concept of God, the concept of petitionary prayer, and the relationship between the two. Taking a different direction, this article shifts the focus from possibility to actuality
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Sceptical theism, divine commands, and love Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Ho-yeung Lee
Sceptical theists respond to the problem of evil by arguing that we should be sceptical of our abilities to understand God's plan and the justifying reasons for his actions. A major difficulty faced by sceptical theism is the problem of moral paralysis. Some sceptical theists have proposed a divine command response: theists can appeal to God's commands in acting, and this circumvents the need to exercise
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Afro-Brazilian religions and religious diversity: contributions to pluralism Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-29 Marciano Adilio Spica
My objective is to explore a possible contribution of Afro-Brazilian religions to a pluralist philosophy of religious diversity. I will especially explore the syncretic wisdom of these religious traditions, showing how it can help us better understand interreligious dynamics. To do this, I begin by exposing some challenges of pluralist theses, highlighting two problems: homogenization and isolationism
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Falsity and untruth Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-29 Peter van Inwagen
Jc Beall's Divine Contradiction is a fascinating defence of the idea that contradictions are true of the tri-personal God. This project requires a logic that avoids the consequence that every proposition follows from a contradiction. Beall presents such a logic. This ‘gap/glut’ logic is the topic of this article. A gap/glut logic presupposes that falsity is not simply the absence of truth – for a proposition
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The unreality of traditional Islamic theism's views on belief, providence, and eschatology: a rejoinder to Tabur Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Imran Aijaz
In a previous work, I argue that traditional Islamic theism's understanding of the world, when juxtaposed with key facts of our world's religious diversity, is implausible. On this understanding, roughly, the truth of tawḥīd (Islamic monotheism) is universally evident, as is belief in its truth. Faithful Muslims act appropriately on knowledge of tawḥīd and are rewarded with heaven, whereas non-Muslims
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Selfhood, persistence, and immortality in Jaina philosophy Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Ana Bajželj
This article explores the notion of immortality in Jaina philosophy by focusing on the problem of the persistence of the self. It considers the concept of persistence within the broader context of Jaina metaphysics and its specific application to living beings. The article analyses the relationship between the immaterial self and its material body to determine which aspects of living beings can be
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True ‘contradictions’ and conflicts in the Talmud Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Owen Hulatt, Lucas Oro Hershtein
In this article, we consider the presence of what appear to be true contradictions in the Talmud. We consider and reject a glut-theoretic response. We argue these apparently contradictory Talmudic passages should be understood not as ordinary propositions, but as being given under an operator. This allows us to understand these rulings as genuinely conflicting, but not genuinely contradictory. We illustrate
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The apple of God's eye: a biblical account of holiness Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-04-11 Samuel Lebens
In this article, an exercise in Jewish philosophy, I propose a taxonomy that can account for and organize all of the many species of holiness that we find in the Hebrew Bible. Each species admits of precise definition. Moreover, the genus as a whole can be unified by a guiding metaphor, suggested by the Bible itself. Holiness, according to this metaphor, is bestowed by a certain type of gaze, and ultimately
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On the virtues of neutrality Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-26 James N. Anderson
Jc Beall's Divine Contradiction proposes a bold response to the so-called ‘logical’ problems of the Trinity: we should admit without embarrassment that divine reality is flat-out contradictory. Beall defends his proposal against a wide range of objections and contends that it enjoys various philosophical and theological virtues, including the virtues of metaphysical and epistemological neutrality.
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Trinity, simplicity, and contradictory theology: a theologian's reflections Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-26 Thomas H. McCall
I explore the promise of Beall's proposal for a long-standing challenge for traditional theology. I first offer a sketch of the problem and a brief overview of some of the more common responses to it. I then show how Beall's proposal holds initial promise; following this I highlight some concerns and raise some questions.
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Divine authority as divine parenthood Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-21 Nicholas Hadsell
In this article, I argue that God is authoritative over us because he is our divine, causal parent. As our causal parent, God has duties to relate to us, but he can only fulfil those duties if he has the practical authority to give us commands aimed at our sanctification. From ought-implies-can reasoning, I conclude that God has that authority. After I make this argument, I show how the view has significant
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The regeneration of the cosmic mind: cosmopsychism, mental chaos, and the new creation Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-20 Harvey Cawdron
In several works, Joanna Leidenhag has discussed the theological merits of panpsychism, the idea that consciousness is ubiquitous in the universe. I shall pursue a related project here in which I consider how a variant of panpsychism called cosmopsychism, in which the universe itself is seen to be conscious, can answer key questions regarding the cosmic scope of sin and redemption in the new creation
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Divine psychology and cosmic fine-tuning Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-18 Miles K. Donahue
After briefly outlining the fine-tuning argument (FTA), I explain how it relies crucially on the claim that it is not improbable that God would design a fine-tuned universe. Against this premise stands the divine psychology objection: the contention that the probability that God would design a fine-tuned universe is inscrutable. I explore three strategies for meeting this objection: (i) denying that
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Non-belief as self-deception? Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-18 Lari Launonen
The suppression thesis is the theological claim that theistic non-belief results from culpable mistreatment of one's knowledge of God or one's evidence for God. The thesis is a traditional one but unpopular today. This article examines whether it can gain new credibility from the philosophy of self-deception and from the cognitive science of religion. The thesis is analysed in terms of the intentionalist
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A defence of merit transfer: Aquinas's interpretation and desert theory Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Ethan Leong Yee
According to Joel Feinberg and most modern scholars of desert, the basis of desert must be a fact about the deserving person, and not about someone else. This widely accepted notion seems self-evident. However according to some religious traditions, such as Buddhism and Roman Catholicism, merit can be transferred from one person to another. That is, someone can deserve something based on some fact
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Glutty and simple? Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Anna Marmodoro
Beall's original understanding of the nature of the divine allows for contradictory statements to be true of God, by assuming that parts of reality, such as the Trinity, are ‘glutty’ (namely, what we can say about them is both true and false). Is the divine is the only glutty part of reality, and if so, why? Furthermore, does the glutty nature of the divine undermine its simplicity? Beall argues that
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Axé as the cornerstone of Candomblé philosophy and its significance for an understanding of well-being (bem estar) Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Bettina E. Schmidt
According to Candomblé, axé is present in every living being and is necessary to life. To develop and maintain a sense of well-being, one must maintain a balanced level of axé which is linked to a reciprocal relationship between human beings and orixás (African deities). This article will explore the link between the spiritual force axé and well-being (bem estar) within Candomblé philosophy. Starting
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An argument for the perspectival account of faith Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-12 Chris Tweedt
Faith, I argue, is a value-oriented perspective, where the subject has a pro-attitude towards the object of the perspective. After summarizing the perspectival account of faith and its upshots that are relevant to the proceeding argument, I give an extended explanatory, cumulative case argument for the account by showing that the perspectival account of faith explains the data that alternative accounts
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Causal and non-causal explanations in theology: the case of Aquinas's primary–secondary causation distinction Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-02-08 Ignacio Silva
The basic question of this article is whether Thomas Aquinas's doctrine of divine providence through his understanding of primary and secondary causation can be understood as a theological causal or non-causal explanation. To answer this question, I will consider some contemporary discussions about the nature of causal and non-causal explanations in philosophy of science and metaphysics, in order to
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‘Not so much thought out as danced out’: expanding philosophy of religion in the light of Candomblé Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Mikel Burley
When the anthropologist R. R. Marett affirmed that certain forms of religion are ‘not so much thought out as danced out’ (1914, xxxi), he was, in effect, anticipating a criticism that has been levelled at philosophy of religion in recent decades – namely, the criticism that this branch of philosophy has frequently underplayed the extent to which religions often prioritize ritual activities (including
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Evil and responsibility in the Quran Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Bakinaz Abdalla
The Quran contains numerous references to evil and some of these indicate that the responsibility of some instances of evil, which I call self-inflicted evil, lies with human beings rather than God. This idea of evil leads to an exploration of two interconnected issues in philosophical and theological discussions, moral responsibility and desert, along with the related tension between freedom of action
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Evil and embodiment: towards a Latter-day Saint non-identity theodicy Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-17 Derek Christian Haderlie, Taylor-Grey Edward Miller
We offer an account of the metaphysics of persons rooted in Latter-day Saint scripture that vindicates the essentiality of origins. We then give theological support for the claim that prospects for the success of God's soul making project are bound up in God creating particular persons. We observe that these persons would not have existed were it not for the occurrence of a variety of evils (of even
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The mythic narratives of Candomblé Nagô and what they imply about its Supreme Being Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-15 José Eduardo Porcher
In this article, I explore the mythic narratives of the Yoruba-derived tradition of Candomblé Nagô to discern the attributes of its Supreme Being. I introduce Candomblé, offering an overview of its central beliefs and practices, and then present theological perspectives on the Supreme Being in African Traditional Religion as a basis for comparison with the myths I will examine. I consider the primary
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In defence of qua-Christology Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-10 Daniel Rubio
Recent analytic theology has seen a wave of excellent work on the fundamental problem of Christology, the question of how one and the same person can be human full stop and divine full stop. Along the way, new objections have been raised for a venerable family of Christological views, whose distinctive is the employment of qua-devices to dissolve the difficulties stemming from the dual nature doctrine
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A Harrean perspective of theology Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Gonzalo L. Recio
The object of this article is to present Christian theology as a case of a Harrean theory, as a mapping which links the members of one set of entities to those of another in a systematic way. I will divide the article into four parts. The first one will be devoted to a brief presentation of the main characteristics of Harré's proposal. Once the fundamentals of the Harrean perspective are presented
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Minding Creation: response to critics Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Joanna Leidenhag
In this article, I reply to four responses published in this journal to my book Minding Creation: Theological Panpsychism and the Doctrine of Creation. Two of these responses, by Christa L. McKirland and Eugene Fuimaono, and by Tim Miller and Thomas Jay Oord, are largely appreciative and propose future engagement with theological anthropology, indigenous perspectives, process metaphysics, and the doctrine
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Original sin, control, and divine blame: some critical reflections on the moderate doctrine of original sin Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Aku Visala, Olli-Pekka Vainio
This article examines a construal of the doctrine of original sin which affirms the cognitive corruption of human faculties but denies that humans carry original guilt for Adam's fall or for cognitive corruption. All humans require Christ's atonement, because they either inevitably commit at least one sin or are rejected by God for other reasons. We go on to identify three problems with this account
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Minding Creation: an overview Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-20 Joanna Leidenhag
The doctrine of creation is a teaching shared across many faith traditions that requires urgent interdisciplinary attention today. Joanna Leidenhag's book Minding Creation considers how the philosophy of panpsychism might be beneficial to the Christian articulation of creation. This article is an overview of the book, in order to contextualize the four responses and author's reply that follows.
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A cross-cultural perspective on God's personhood Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-13 Akshay Gupta
Debates about God's personhood, or lack thereof, are central to philosophy of religion. This article aims to advance these debates by presenting the ‘greatness of personhood argument’ for God's personhood and a dilemma for those who deny God's personhood. I also consider various objections to this argument and this dilemma and argue that they fail. Notably, my reasoning in defence of personal theism
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What doesn't kill me makes me stronger? Post-traumatic growth and the problem of suffering Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-12 Michelle Panchuk
This article argues that the Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG) literature does not support the claim, made most notably by Eleonore Stump, that suffering tends to promote psychic integration that allows for interpersonal closeness with God (or others). Two strains of argument support this conclusion. First, there are problems internal to PTG research, identified by psychologists and bioethicists in the field
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Faith as skill: an essay on faith in the Abrahamic tradition Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-29 M. Hosein M. A. Khalaj
What is the nature of religious faith as understood in the Abrahamic tradition? This article suggests a novel answer to this question. To this end, I first outline five desiderata, characterized by appealing to conceptions of faith in both the Islamic and Christian traditions, which I think every adequate account of faith should satisfy. These five desiderata are: (1) explaining the principle of the
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Exemplars in ‘science and religion’: a theological dialogue with Thomas Kuhn Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-28 Josh A. Reeves
This article argues that Thomas Kuhn's landmark work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, has not been adequately explored by theologians and scholars in the field of science and religion. While many cite Kuhn to suggest that science and religion share structural similarities, I contend that his work is crucial in addressing current debates about the definitions of ‘science’ and ‘religion’ and
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A Christian ethics of blame: or, God says, ‘vengeance is mine’ Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-23 Robert J. Hartman
There is an ethics of blaming the person who deserves blame. The Christian scriptures imply the following no-vengeance condition: a person should not vengefully overtly blame a wrongdoer even if she gives the wrongdoer the exact negative treatment that he deserves. I explicate and defend this novel condition and argue that it demands a revolution in our blaming practices. First, I explain the no-vengeance
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On sin-based responses to divine hiddenness Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-20 Max Baker-Hytch
While sin-based responses to divine hiddenness arguments are a road less travelled, they do nonetheless have a number of defenders in the contemporary divine hiddenness literature. I begin this article by exploring the various strategies that have been employed to attempt to motivate such accounts. What none of these strategies seem to take into account, however, is a cluster of facts about the correlation
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Evil and evidence: a reply to Bass Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-07 Mike Almeida
In ‘Evil is Still Evidence: Comments on Almeida’ Robert Bass presents three objections to the central argument (ENE) in my ‘Evil is Not Evidence’. The first objection is that ENE is invalid. According to the second objection, it is a consequence of ENE that there can be no evidence for or against a posteriori necessities. The third objection is that, contrary to ENE, the likelihood of certain necessary
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My religion preaches ‘p’, but I don't believe that p: Moore's Paradox in religious assertions Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Maciej Tarnowski
In this article, I consider the cases of religious Moorean propositions of the form ‘d, but I don't believe that d’ and ‘d, but I believe that ~d’, where d is a religious dogma, proposition, or part of a creed. I argue that such propositions can be genuinely and rationally asserted and that this fact poses a problem for traditional analysis of religious assertion as an expression of faith and of religious
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Aquinas's science-engaged theology Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-23 Ignacio Silva, Gonzalo Recio
Science-engaged theology has emerged as a new way of conducting research within the vast field of science and religion, with the aim of, at least in one way of understanding it today, solving theological puzzles. In this article we suggest that an analysis of the diversity of approaches in which thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas engaged theological questions with the best
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Divine hiddenness, the demographics of theism, and mutual epistemic dependence: a response to Max Baker-Hytch Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-23 Andrew Blanton
In his article ‘Divine Hiddenness and the Demographics of Theism’ Stephen Maitzen (2006) develops a permutation of the argument from divine hiddenness which focuses on the uneven distribution of theistic belief around the globe. Max Baker-Hytch (2016) responds to this argument by providing a theodicy which appeals to the fact that humans are epistemically interdependent. In this article I argue that
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Psychic immunity and uncomprehended pain: what Maimonides can tell us about the problem of suffering Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-23 Ben Conroy
Using Moses Maimonides’ theodicy to respond to contemporary formulations of the problem of evil initially seems unpromising. Maimonides is committed to claims that make the task harder rather than easier. Chief among them is his belief that all suffering is deserved by the sufferer. But Maimonides is often misinterpreted: he does not hold that innocent people are never subject to bodily harm, but that
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Schelling and the problem of evil Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-10 Nahum Brown
This article contributes to discussions about the problem of evil and Schelling studies by analysing Schelling's conception of the problem in his 1809 Freiheitsschrift essay. I explicate Schelling's critical response to four classic solutions to the problem (embodiment, degree, dualism, and divine forms) and outline his positive solution. My thesis is that Schelling offers a unique theodicy by arguing
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By what measure? A signpost theory of the truth of doctrine Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-06 Edward DeLaquil
This article proposes a novel theory of the truth of doctrine. A signpost theory of the truth of doctrine is informed by practice-based philosophy of science. I argue that a theory of the truth of doctrine needs to explain the construction, use, and judgement of doctrine. So, I raise questions about the truth of doctrine in reference to the relation between a theory of the truth of doctrine and the
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Counting hiddenness: cognitive science and the distribution of belief in God Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-06 Adam Green
Establishing the distribution of belief in something, especially something that spans cultures and times, requires close attention to empirical evidence and to certain inadequacies in our concept of belief. Arguments from divine hiddenness have quickly become one of the most important argument types in the philosophy of religion. These arguments and responses to them typically rely on robust but relatively
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What if God was all of us? Why the definition of ‘God’ matters in analytic discussions of meaning in life Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-06 Asheel Singh
Contemporary analytic treatments of meaning in life in the English-speaking Anglo-American-Australasian tradition have largely proceeded from the atheistic and naturalistic assumptions common to the sciences. With the recent publication of Seachris and Goetz's God and Meaning (2016), T. J. Mawson's God and the Meanings of Life (2016), and Thaddeus Metz's God, Soul and the Meaning of Life (2019), more
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God, the laws of nature, and occasionalism Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-02 Jeffrey Koperski
Occasionalism is often seen as a peculiarity of early modern philosophy. The idea that God is the sole source of efficient causation in the world strikes many as at best implausible. It was, however, a natural inference based on the seventeenth-century view that the laws of nature are simply God's decrees. The question here is whether such a view and its more recent descendants entail occasionalism
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‘Orthodox panentheism’ is neither orthodox nor coherent Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-10-02 James Dominic Rooney
Jeremiah Carey presents a version of panentheism which he attributes to Gregory Palamas, as well as other Greek patristic thinkers. The Greek tradition, he alleges, is more open to panentheistic metaphysics than the Latin. Palamas, for instance, hold that God's energies are participable, even if God's essence is not. Carey uses Palamas' metaphysics to sketch an account on which divine energies are
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Human rights and divine holiness Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-28 Kevin Vallier
Theists commonly hold that God endows humans with rights. Standard explanations draw on natural law theory or divine command theory. However, the natural law account does not give God a central role in explaining our rights, and the divine command account does not assign human nature a significant explanatory role. A successful theistic explanation of human rights must meet three conditions: (1) God
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Scientism and the value of scientific evidence for religious belief Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Jack Warman, Leandro De Brasi
This article presents a novel argument against an application of evidential scientism to religious belief. In particular, our target is those arguments at whose core lies the claim that it ought to be the case that, if one holds religious beliefs, then those beliefs are based on the best scientific evidence. Moreover, rather than focussing on the philosophical puzzles that usually fall within the purview
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Nagasawa's Maximal God and the Ontological Argument Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-09-04 Peter Millican
Yujin Nagasawa has recently defended two reformulated Ontological Arguments, one adapted from Anselm's ‘Classical’ version and one from Plantinga's ‘Modal’ version. This article explains in detail why both of them fail, and then goes on to present general objections to any Ontological Argument.
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Embracing the mystery: David Hume's playful religion of wonder Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-29 Hannah Lingier
In this article I show how David Hume's works provide the ingredients for a conception of religiosity understood as a feeling of wonder concerning nature or existence, accompanied by a playful attitude regarding the imaginative shapes that can be given to this emotion. Hume serves as an inspiration rather than an object of study: I respect the spirit and values of his work, while going beyond his own
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Communal sin, atonement, and group non-agential moral responsibility Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-09 Harvey Cawdron
In analytic theology, corporate and/or communal accounts of moral responsibility are gaining recognition as a useful resource in numerous debates. One of the areas to which they have been applied is the atonement. It is thought that when Christ is atoning for the human community, one evades concerns about justice because it seems permissible for a member of a group to suffer punishment for the group's
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Newman on emotion and cognition in the Grammar of Assent Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-09 Emma Emrich
This article considers the role of emotion in John Henry Newman's Grammar of Assent by distinguishing five different ways (or ‘models’) in which the emotions play a positive epistemic role in relation to cognition. The most important of these, the Cognitive-Emotion Model, offers a new account of Newman's crucial idea of real assent, one that stresses the primary role of the emotions in real assent
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You could be immaterial (or not) Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-09 Andrew M. Bailey
Materialists about human persons say that we are, and must be, wholly material beings. Substance dualists say that we are, and must be, wholly immaterial. In this article, I take issue with the ‘and must be’ bits. Both materialists and substance dualists would do well to reject modal extensions of their views and instead opt for contingent doctrines, or doctrines that are silent about those modal extensions
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Consubstantial dualism: a Zoroastrian perspective on the soul Religious Studies (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-08-02 Ted Good
This article describes the group of ninth-century Zoroastrian philosophers I call the ‘Dēnkard School’ and sketches the way they do philosophy. It presents their argument against substance dualism, which the Zoroastrians argue is in tension with the belief in repentance. From an analysis of this polemic, there follows a reconstruction of the Dēnkard School's own doctrine of the consubstantiality of