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.

Saul Smilansky presents us with a puzzle which, in combination with a small number of premises, is supposed to generate a reversal of Pascal's wager: the wagerer should bet on a secular lifestyle, and reject religion, as the surest way of pleasing God (if God exists). In this article, we argue that the puzzle, once unpacked, isn't particularly puzzling, that the premises aren't true, and that Smilansky's wager is open to both reductio and a reversal of its own.

Thomas Ward explicates and defends a version of divine exemplarism called Containment Exemplarism to make good on the claim that God is a ‘totally original artist’. According to Containment Exemplarism, (i) God ex nihilo creates according to divine ideas, (ii) divine ideas are about an aspect or part of God, and (iii) God has the ideas he has by knowing himself. Containment Exemplarism, we are told, secures the rationality and creativity of the divine creative act. I argue, first, that Ward's God is not a totally original artist since, on Containment Exemplarism, God does not act creatively in creating. Theistic Activism, the view that God makes up the ideas he has, can secure the creativity of the divine creative act. I argue, second, that Ward's argument against the rationality of God making stuff up fails. Thus, there is one version of divine exemplarism that satisfies key desiderata for divine creation.

This article appreciatively reviews Joanna Leidenhag's work Minding Creation: Theological Panpsychism and the Doctrine of Creation while also responding critically to some aspects of Leidenhag's approach and content. The authors acknowledge several strengths of Leidenhag's work, then turn to how a panpsychic framework comports with Christa L. McKirland's recent work in theological anthropology. Finally, Eugene Fuimaono proposes areas of expansion for Leidenhag to consider – specifically as this relates to the value of engaging indigenous perspectives.

Michael Almeida has recently tried to show that if S5 correctly represents metaphysical necessity, there can be no non-trivial evidence for or against the existence of the traditional God. Evidence would thus be irrelevant to the reasonability of traditional theistic belief. Almeida's argument has implications beyond its announced target: it amounts to a new argument for sweeping scepticism. Almeida's argument for the irrelevance of evidence to the existence of God would apply to any state of affairs that entails some metaphysical necessity. In S5, every state of affairs entails some metaphysical necessity, so Almeida should conclude that non-trivial evidence for or against any state of affairs is impossible. I argue that the problem is not with S5 but with inadequately motivated assumptions about evidential support. Avoiding those assumptions disables the argument for sweeping scepticism and without foreclosing the possibility of non-trivial evidence for or against the existence of the traditional God.

Joanna Leidenhag has written a ground-breaking book arguing that the concept of panpsychism can solve several problems facing present-day humans. It can motivate greater commitment to concern for earth's diverse environments and the life forms that inhabit them. And it can solve theological problems connected with human consciousness, notably, how consciousness and matter coexist and interact. This article summarizes and comments on Leidenhag's arguments, then suggests several paths forward for those inspired by Leidenhag's ideas and arguments who wish to explore them and related notions in greater depth.

Joanna Leidenhag's claim in her book, Minding Creation, that panpsychists should (a) abandon naturalism and (b) adopt traditional theism is evaluated and critiqued. It is argued that panpsychism is compatible with naturalism and does not commit one to any metaphysic of the divine, including traditional theism.

In this article, I offer a response to Joanna Leidenhag's book Mind Creation: Theological Panpsychism and the Doctrine of Creation. Whereas Leidenhag argues that the panpsychist's demands for explanation of the mind lead naturally to demands for an explanation of the whole universe, I counter that (i) the panpsychist's explanatory demands are not necessarily quite as general as Leidenhag presumes, and (ii) demands for an explanation of the whole universe can in any case be satisfying via the postulation of a self-explaining universe. I agree with Leidenhag that panpsychism is potentially a helpful way for Christians to think about the relationship between God and the universe, while disagreeing concerning how well suited process theism is to making sense of such a relationship. Finally, in terms of eco-philosophy, I agree with Leidenhag that panpsychism is conducive to a healthier relationship between humans and the natural world, while expressing reservations that a specifically Christian form of panpsychist eco-philosophy is preferable.

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 of the incarnation. The other two responses, by Andrei Buckareff and Philip Goff, offer critical engagement on arguments I made regarding the relationship between panpsychism, naturalism, and theism.

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.

This article offers some reflections on Christina Van Dyke's Hidden Wisdom, using the opportunity to make some suggestions as to possible lines of influence between the world of scholastic theology and that of the female medieval mystics in what Van Dyke considers their ‘annihilationist’ mode: that the goal of the spiritual life is transformation into God in some sense.