Alvin Plantinga's much heralded religious epistemology is a many-faceted thing. In simplest terms, it is an attempt to free would-be rational theists from the evidentialist requirement for religious belief and to show that they are well within their ‘epistemic rights’ in taking certain beliefs about God as ‘properly basic’. In an early version of his programme, Plantinga sought to achieve both these objectives through a single strategem, namely via the overthrow of ‘classical foundationalism’, an historically wide-ranging approach to epistemology he judges to be, even today, preeminent. Plantinga's frontal attack on his self-styled opposition, however, soon proved inadequate to his task, largely because it exposed his own position to criticism and left pressing questions unanswered. By this time, of course, Plantinga has done much to reply to his critics and to address fundamental questions; yet in so doing, he has adopted argumentative manoeuvres, some quite surprising, that take him considerably beyond his original position. These developments in his proposal are central to the discussion that follows. If we are to comprehend them, however, we must begin where he did, with a critique of classical foundationalism, for in the case of Plantinga's religious epistemology, to trace genesis is to elucidate growth.

This article aims to provide an explication of the doctrine of the monarchy of the Father. A precisification of the doctrine is made within the building-fundamentality framework provided by Karen Bennett, which enables a further clarification of the central elements of the doctrine to be made and an important objection against it to be answered.

The classical conception of God is that of a necessary being. On a possible worlds semantics, this entails that God exists at every possible world. According to the modal realist account of David Lewis, possible worlds are understood to be real, concrete worlds – no different in kind from the actual world. But, modal realism is equipped to accommodate the existence of a necessary being in only one of three ways: (1) By way of counterpart theory, or (2) by way of a special case of trans-world identity for causally inert necessary beings (e.g. pure sets), or else (3) causally potent ones which lack accidental intrinsic properties. I argue that each of these three options entails unacceptable consequences – (1) and (2) are incompatible with theism, and (3) is incompatible with modal realism. I conclude that (at least) one of these views is false.

To say that God is omniscient, most philosophers and theologians agree, is to say that he knows all true propositions and none that are false. But there is a great deal of disagreement about what is knowable. Some believe that God's knowledge is limited to everything that is (or has been) actual and that which will follow deterministically from it. He knows, for example, exactly what Caesar was thinking when he crossed the Rubicon and how many horses he had in his army that day. And he knows exactly how Gorbachev feels about the use of nuclear weapons. And since he knows how the ‘laws of nature’ (which he has purportedly created) function, he knows, for example, how certain weather systems will develop and what their effects will be on certain natural environments. But with respect to any future state of affairs which includes free human decision-making as a causal component, God is said not to know what will occur. God, as the ultimate psychoanalyst or behaviourist, can with great accuracy predict what we will freely decide to do in the future in many cases. He might well, for example, be able to predict quite accurately who will win the 1988 Presidential election. But a God who possesses only ‘present knowledge’ (PK) cannot know who will win. Given that the election in question is dependent on free choices which have yet to be made, there is presently nothing for God to know.

In a series of articles in this journal, Wes Morriston has launched what can only be considered a full-scale assault on the divine command theory (DCT) of morality. According to Morriston, proponents of this theory are committed to an alarming counterpossible: that if God did command an annual human sacrifice, it would be morally obligatory. Since only a ‘terrible’ deity would do such a ‘terrible’ thing, we should reject DCT. Indeed, if there were such a deity, the world would be a terrible place – certainly far worse than it is. We argue that Morriston's non-standard method for assessing counterpossibles of this sort is flawed. Not only is the savvy DCT-ist at liberty to reject it, but Morriston's method badly misfires in the face of theistic activism – a metaphysical platform available to DCT-ists, according to which if God didn't exist, neither would anything else.

In this paper I critically examine Brian Leftow's attempt to construct a theistic semantics for counterpossibles, one that can be used to make sense of the fact that propositions, which exist necessarily, nevertheless depend on God as their cause. I argue that the impressive theoretical framework erected by Leftow cannot guarantee an asymmetrical dependence of propositions on God, and ultimately leads to a semantic collapse in which every counterpossible comes out false. I end by defending an alternative account of God and propositions – what I call ‘theistic existentialism’. It is shown how this account underwrites a semantics for counterpossibles that conveniently avoids the problems attending Leftow's theory.

In Volume i of his Systematic Theology, Paul Tillich says, ‘Being precedes nonbeing in ontological validity, as the word “nonbeing” itself indicates’ (p. 189). He also says elsewhere, ‘Being “embraces” itself and nonbeing’, and ‘Nonbeing is dependent on the being it negates. “Dependent”—points first of all to the ontological priority of being over nonbeing’ (The Courage to Be, p. 34, p. 40). Tillich makes these statements in connection with a tendency among some Christian thinkers to take God as Being itself. The same understanding of the relation of being and non-being can be discerned in major strands of Greek philosophy through the ideas of to on and me on. Although Greek philosophy and the Christian movement have different starting points in time, in geographical locale, in conceptual orientation, Tillich's statements demonstrate the manner in which the two strands have, to a significant degree, merged, and his comments reflect a basic under standing (if not the basic understanding) of being and nonbeing in the West.

The doctrine that Christ is really present in the Eucharist appears to entail that Christ's body is not only multiply located but present in different ways at different locations. Moreover, the doctrine poses an even more difficult meta-question: what makes a theological explanation of the Eucharist a ‘real presence’ account? Aquinas's defence of transubstantiation, perhaps the paradigmatic account, invokes Aristotelian metaphysics and the machinery of Scholastic philosophy. My aim is not to produce a ‘rational reconstruction’ of his analysis but rather to suggest a metaphysically innocent alternative that will ‘save the phenomena’ of religious belief and practice.

In debate on faith and reason two opposing positions have dominated the field. The first position asserts that faith and reason are commensurable and the second position denies that assertion. Those holding to the first position differ among themselves as to the extent of the compatibility between faith and reason, most adherents relegating the compatibility to the ‘preambles of faith’ (e.g. the existence of God and his nature) over against the ‘articles of faith’ (e.g. the doctrine of the incarnation). Few have maintained complete harmony between reason and faith, i.e. a religious belief within the realm of reason alone. The second position divides into two sub-positions: (1) that which asserts that faith is opposed to reason (which includes such unlikely bedfellows as Hume and Kierkegaard), placing faith in the area of irrationality; and (2) that which asserts that faith is higher than reason, is transrational. Calvin and Barth assert that a natural theology is inappropriate because it seeks to meet unbelief on its own ground (ordinary human reason). Revelation, however, is ‘self-authenticating’, ‘carrying with it its own evidence’.1 We may call this position the ‘transrationalist’ view of faith. Faith is not so much against reason as above it and beyond its proper domain. Actually, Kierkegaard shows that the two sub-positions are compatible. He holds both that faith is above reason (superior to it) and against reason (because reason has been affected by sin). The irrationalist and transrationalist positions are sometimes hard to separate in the incommensurabilist's arguments. At least, it seems that faith gets such a high value that reason comes off looking not simply inadequate but culpable. To use reason where faith claims the field is not only inappropriate but irreverent or faithless.

Kant is often viewed as the exemplar of the Enlightenment tendency to reduce religion to morality, to eliminate religious appeals to mystery or to supernatural action, and to insist – in Kant's own words – that we ourselves must make ourselves ‘into whatever, in a moral sense, whether good or evil’, we are to become. His entire philosophy in some ways epitomizes what Hans Blumenberg has called the ‘project of self–assertion’, the ‘essence of which [can be] formulated as the “program of antidivine self–deification”’. For if the centerpiece of Kant's philosophical vision is human autonomy, and if the implicit point of a Kantian view of morality and religion is to equate salvation with the individual achievement of virtue, then there seems to be little role left for a heteronomous grace or divine act to play.

It is a widely held belief that one can will to believe, disbelieve, and withhold belief concerning propositions. It is sometimes said that we have a duty to believe certain propositions. These theses have had a long and respected history. In one form or another they receive the support of a large number of philosophers and theologians who have written on the relationship of the will to believing. In the New Testament Jesus holds his disciples responsible for their beliefs, reprimands them for doubting, and speaks of the ability to believe as if it were optional. Paul makes it clear that he thinks propositional belief is a necessary condition for salvation. If a man confesses Christ as Lord with his lips and believes in his heart that God has raised him from the dead, he shall be saved (Romans 10: 9f.). The writer of Hebrews implies that unless we have certain propositional beliefs we cannot please God (Heb. II: 6). In the New Testament most cases of pistis (belief, faith) involve more than a propositional attitude. They involve the idea of trust and faithfulness. Nevertheless, a prima facie case for saying that the volitional theses can be found in the New Testament can be made. Forms of volitionalism can be found stated more explicitly in the writings of the early Church, in the writings of Irenaeus, in the Athanasian Creed, and in Augustine. Acquinas describes faith as an act of the intellect moved by the will. Descartes is perhaps the classic example of a volitionalist, holding that if we were not responsible for our beliefs (especially our false beliefs), then God would be - which is tantamount to blasphemy in that it makes God into a deceiver.

Religious believers understand the meaning of their lives in the light of the way in which they are related to God. Life is significant because it is lived in the presence of God, and ultimate bliss consists in being in the right relation with God. Through sin, however, our relationship with God has been drastically disrupted. The fundamental religious issue which we all have to face, therefore, is how this relationship can be restored. How can we attain ultimate bliss by being reconciled with God? Basically, this is the issue with which the doctrine of atonement has to deal:

The English word ‘atonement’ is derived from the words ‘at-one-ment’, to make two parties at one, to reconcile two parties one to another. It means essentially reconciliation… In current usage, the phrase ‘to atone for’ means the undertaking of a course of action designed to undo the consequences of a wrong act with a view to the restoration of the relationship broken by the wrong act.

I think that there is much about contemporary philosophy of religion that should change. Most importantly, philosophy of religion should be philosophy of religion, not merely philosophy of theism, or philosophy of Christianity, or philosophy of certain denominations of Christianity, or the like. Here, however, I shall complain about one fairly narrow aspect of contemporary philosophy of religion that really irks me: its obsession with derivations that have as their conclusion either the claim that God exists or the claim that God does not exist. I shall work myself up by degrees.

Substance dualism is on the move. Though the view remains unfashionable, a growing and diverse group of philosophers endorse it on impressive empirical, religious, and purely metaphysical grounds. In this note, I develop and evaluate one conceptual argument for substance dualism. According to that argument, we may derive a conclusion about our nature from the mere fact that we have the concept of a spirit. The argument is intriguing and fruitful; but I shall contend that it is, nonetheless, unsound.

Several recent critiques of theodicy have incorporated some form of moral objection to the theodical enterprise, in which the critic argues that one ought not to engage in the practice of theodicy. In defending theodical practice against the moral critique, Atle O. Søvik argues that the moral critique (1) begs the question against theodicy, and (2) misapprehends the implications of the claim that it is inappropriate to espouse a theodicy in certain situations. In this paper I suggest some sympathetic emendations for Søvik's theodical apologetic, but I argue against Søvik's claim that the moral critique of theodicy is altogether irrelevant.

Many philosophers have claimed that theological statements, if taken as referring to something transcending the world of human experience, are devoid of factual content. They may be meaningful in other ways, but they cannot function to describe anything, to say anything true or false. The two most famous defences of this view are Ayer's in chapter vi of Language, Truth, and Logic, and Flew's in his essay ‘Theology and Falsification’.1

The problem of evil is typically presented as a problem – sometimes the problem – facing theistic realists. This article takes no stance on what effect (if any) the existence of evil has on the rationality of theistic belief. Instead, it explores the possibility of using the problem of evil to generate worries for some of those who reject theistic realism. Although this article focuses on the consequences for a particular kind of religious fictionalist, the lessons adduced are intended to have more general application.

Peter van Inwagen's ‘No-Minimum’ argument boldly rejects a proposition widely accepted by theists and atheists alike: God and gratuitous evil are incompatible. Jeff Jordan (2003) criticizes van Inwagen's argument and (Jordan 2011) defends his position against Michael Schrynemakers (2007). I present two criticisms of Jordan. Concerning his first paper, I argue that if it is plausible to suppose that there exist undetectable evils, Jordan's argument is incomplete. Concerning his second paper, I show how Jordan fails to engage adequately with Schrynemakers's reply and, more seriously, with the notion of satisficing implicit in van Inwagen's No-Minimum argument. To draw out this second criticism, I make use of another debate in the philosophy of religion: the problem of no-best-world.

Sceptical theists attempt to block the evidential argument from evil by arguing that a key premise of that argument – that gratuitous evil exists – cannot reasonably be maintained. They argue that, for all we know, our knowledge of reasons God may have to permit such evil is radically incomplete. Thus the fact that we cannot identify reasons for God to permit the evil we observe does not allow us reasonably to conclude that no such reasons exist. In response, Erik Wielenberg has pointed out what appears to be, for many sceptical theists, an unfortunate further consequence of their position. According to Wielenberg, if sceptical theism is correct, then, similarly, the fact that we cannot identify reasons why God would lie to us does not allow us reasonably to conclude no such reasons exist. But then, for all we know, God's word constitutes not a divine revelation but a divine lie. This article examines sceptical theist responses to Wielenberg's argument to date (from Segal, and McBrayer and Swenson) and develops two new Wielenberg-style arguments for the same conclusion.

According to the Eucharistic doctrine of Transubstantiation, when the priest consecrates the bread and wine, the whole substance of the bread and wine are converted into the body and blood of Christ. The ‘accidents’ of the bread and wine, however, remain present on the altar. This doctrine leads to a clutch of metaphysical problems, some of which are particularly troubling for essentialists. In this paper, I discuss some of these problems, which have recently been pressed by Brian Ellis and Justin Broackes. I argue that defenders of Transubstantiation have satisfactory replies.