Divine Goodness Research Articles

“Therefore I Say, Mary”

Abstract The recently published P.Oxy. 5577 bears such striking similarities to the Gospel of Mary that this article argues that it may be from the missing pages in which Mary recalls her vision of Jesus and their private conversation. By examining the shared themes of cosmology and eschatology, incarnation and divine goodness, baptism and salvation, Jesus appearing as and through the νοῦς, and the privileged role of Mary, this article argues that we see a continuous teaching from the beginning of the extant Coptic Gos. Mary, through the Greek fragments including P.Oxy. 5577, to the end of the gospel. Although P.Oxy. 5577 cannot definitively be identified as Gos. Mary, the correlations are enough to take the suggestion of its likelihood seriously.

Intellectual Humility and the Argument from Evil: A Reply to Zain Ali

This is a response to Zain Ali’s critique in this journal of our presentation of a ‘right relationship’ normatively relativised ‘logical’ Argument from Evil. Our argument aims to show that the existence of horrendous evils (as defined by Marilyn Adams) is incompatible with the existence of the personal omniGod (a person or personal being who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good), given certain reasonable judgments about what a personal God’s perfect goodness would imply about the way God relates to those caught up in horrendous evils. We reply to Ali’s main criticism that our assumptions about divine goodness are unjustified, and show a lack of intellectual humility. We defend the claim that, if God is a person, then God’s goodness is moral goodness according to our best human theory of what that implies. We accept that God’s situation as creator and sustainer of all that exists may justify ‘divine exceptionalism’: God’s personal moral goodness may be consistent with ways of relating to others that would fall far short of perfection in human-to-human relationships. But in that case, we argue, intellectual humility may be better served by accepting that God is so exceptional that God should not be understood as a person at all, which is the prevailing Muslim view, as Ali himself acknowledges.

Exalting Christ and God’s Sovereign Grace: Augustinianism and Anti-Arminianism in Samuel Rutherford’s Covenant of Works

ABSTRACT This article examines how Samuel Rutherford, a leading Reformed theologian in seventeenth-century Scotland, discussed Adam’s obedience and merit within the doctrine of the covenant of works and underscored grace as given by God’s free will. Rutherford utilised the late medieval Augustinian Thomas Bradwardine’s voluntarist thought on grace and ethics and highlighted the prevenient nature of grace. The distinctive features of Rutherford’s covenant of works stem from his rejection of the Arminian elevation of human ability and imposition of necessity on God’s ad extra activities by binding these activities with divine goodness and love. Thus, Rutherford’s doctrine of the pre-fall covenant was shaped by anti-Arminian and anti-Pelagian concerns. To pursue this polemic, two late mediaeval traditions of Bradwardinian Augustinianism and God’s covenantal acceptance eventually converged in the development of Rutherford’s covenant of works.

Simon of Tournai's Stroke: The Image of an Irate Unbeliever

For centuries after his death in the late twelfth century, Simon of Tournai, a master of theology in the Parisian schools, had a reputation for being an unbeliever punished by God with a stroke. This article gathers the eight known medieval sources for his stroke and examines them from a mythogenetic perspective to demonstrate how different authors writing with different purposes, genres, and biases recast the image of Simon as an unbeliever for their own moral or polemical programs. I argue that since Simon's stroke was interpreted as divine action, presenting him as sinful was required to preserve divine goodness. The article also discusses the representation of Simon as irate as an element of didactic intent against unbelief, blasphemy, pride, anger, and luxuria. The article revises the date of Simon's stroke from c. 1201 to the 1180s or very early 1190s.

دراسة السلوك التربوي للنبي محمد () في نهج البلاغة

نبي محمد (7) هو أعظم معلم في البشرية وخاتم الرسل ، وقد ورد ذكره في القرآن الكريم باعتباره أفضل نموذج للمسلمين والبشر ، ومن الواضح أن معرفته هي بداية معرفة كل الخير والكمال الإلهي ، وقد وصف الإمام علي (عليه السلام) النبي الكريم بأفضل طريقة في خطبه البليغة ، أي في نهج البلاغة. إن هذه الدراسة تهدف إلى شرح السلوك التربوي للنبي الكريم (7)، بناءً على كلام الإمام علي (عليه السلام) ، باستخدام الأساليب الوصفية والتحليلية وكذلك أدوات البحث والتنقيب عن الوثائق في المكتبات لجمع البيانات وتحليلها. وقد أظهرت النتائج أن الإمام علي (عليه السلام) قد ركز أكثر على ثلاثة جوانب رئيسية من حياة الرسول الكريم (7) ، وهي : المثابرة على الدعوة إلى التوحيد ، ومحاربة الشرك والجهل والخرافات ، وشرح طبيعته الطاهرة والمقدسة وتأثيرها على المسلمين كنموذج يحتذى به في الزهد والتقوى

Laura Marcus (7 March 1956–22 September 2021)

Laura Marcus (7 March 1956–22 September 2021)

Divine Fate Moral and the Best of All Possible Worlds: Origen’s Apokatastasis Panton in Cambridge Origenism and Enlightenment Rationalism

AbstractIn his account of his Düsseldorf conversations with G.E. Lessing shortly before the latter’s death in 1781, F.H. Jacobi records the Enlightenment poet and philosopher’s allusion to the Kabbalistic philosophy of Henry More, whom he cited in support of his shocking Spinozist creed of the hen kai pan. Origen’s first Christian philosophy hinges upon a conviction of universal divine goodness which cannot but share its riches with beings capable of participating in it by virtue of their own free will. From this first Christian truth flow the infamous doctrines of the pre‐existence of souls and, above all, the restitution of all things envisaged as a never‐ending process of autonomous moral soul‐making. Origen’s philosophy of divine goodness and human freedom appealed deeply to the Cambridge Platonists Ralph Cudworth and Henry More, who cited the Church Father in support of their metaphysics of God’s benignity and man’s free will. German rationalist G.W. Leibniz was also a close reader of Cudworth and More. Both his Theodicy and his Monadology—notably the notion of a best possible world created by a good God and inhabited by self‐improving spiritual monads—are indebted to the Church Father’s Christian philosophy. G.E. Lessing, reviewing the controversial discussions about the apokatastasis in his day, staunchly defended Leibniz’s Origenist rationalism in several works devoted to his philosophical eschatology. Above all, he restated Origen’s notion of salvation as divine pedagogy in his celebrated Education of the Human Race. The present essay establishes the deeply Origenist character of the historic systems of these two seminal German rationalists, with their shared concern for God’s creative goodness and man’s free perfectibility.

Positive psychotherapy based on “belief in divine goodness” for subclinical depression in Iran: treatment development, feasibility, and preliminary results

ABSTRACT Implementing positive psychotherapy in various cultures is challenging. This study assessed the clinical outcomes of a positive psychotherapy protocol based on “belief in divine goodness”, using a multiple-baseline design. We used a modified form of Seligman’s protocol on three Iranian adults with subclinical depression. Four new techniques were also added to the protocol to enhance the concept of happiness and life satisfaction, based on the dominant religious culture in Iran. The participants showed lower levels of depression but higher happiness, life satisfaction, pleasure, engagement and meaning in their lives compared to their status at the baseline. The new protocol may have psychotherapeutic benefits for use in subjects with subclinical depression. Future studies with larger sample sizes are warranted to assess the true effects of this protocol compared to those achieved by standard positive psychotherapy.

Goethe’s Faust II: The Redemption of an Enlightened Despot

ABSTRACT Faust, a cosmic drama with epic qualities, is the great epic of the Enlightenment. It turns on the problem of theodicy or vindicating divine goodness. Does Faust, in view of his crimes, deserve to be saved? In particular, the deaths of Philemon and Baucis, victims of the engineering works carried out in Faust II, Act v, have been condemned by critics, as has Faust’s project of founding a free society. In reply, it is argued that Faust is modelled on Enlightenment despots who engaged in land reclamation, often at human cost, for their subjects’ ultimate betterment. Faust’s ascent to heaven does not imply his exoneration, but initiates a process of purification, for which Goethe was indebted to the theologian Origen mediated via Gottfried Arnold.

Anne Conway's Metaphysics of Change

AbstractThe Aristotelian account of change—according to which no individual can survive a change of species because an individual's essence is, at least in part, determined by its species membership—remains popular in the seventeenth century. One important, but often overlooked dissenting voice comes from Anne Conway. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Conway firmly rejects the Aristotelian account of change. She instead endorses the doctrine of Radical Mutability, the view that a creature can belong to different species at different times. A horse, for example, can gradually become a human being and yet remain the same individual. Why, though, is Conway so opposed to the prima facie appealing Aristotelian account of change? This paper claims that she levels two arguments against this account which have been largely neglected so far. First, she argues that there could be no causal interaction between creatures belonging to different species with distinct essences, because cause and effect would be too dissimilar in that case. Second, Conway argues that the Aristotelian model is inconsistent with divine goodness because it allows for the annihilation of creatures and because it imposes arbitrary restrictions on the capacity of creatures to improve.

Некоторые размышления о «Моральной благости Бога» Ричарда Суинберна

In this paper, I consider Richard Swinburne’s treatment of the idea of divine goodness in his new article “God’s Moral Goodness” with reference to his understanding of these three themes: the prior probability of theism; the predictive power of theism relative to naturalism with respect to various generic features of the world; and the question of why God should have made this world in particular. In each case, my intention is not fundamentally to challenge Swinburne’s account, but to seek to draw out its implications, and to consider at what points it might invite elaboration, if is to be located within, for example, a Christian conception of the divine reasons for creating.

Theodicy Incarnate: Divine Self-Justification

The most prominent obstacle to hope and faith in God is an experienced world evidently at odds with the goodness and thus the reality of God. This obstacle gets traction when combined with the assumption, found in many Biblical narratives, that God merits worship and trust from humans owing to impeccable divine goodness. This article examines whether, and if so how, God can avoid the charge that divine failure to eliminate or to reduce actual human suffering disqualifies God from being worthy of worship and trust. We thus ask whether God merits the benefit of the doubt regarding a charge of divine neglect for evil human suffering. This leads to the key issue of the adequacy of a vantage point from which divine goodness is assessed. If a particular human vantage point is so narrow as to be misleading regarding divine goodness, it can be inferior to other available vantage points. Clarification of this lesson opens the door to a widely neglected vantage point of a ‘showing-how theodicy’ in contrast with an ‘explaining-why theodicy.’ The former theodicy fits with many of the Biblical narratives, and it enables God to merit the benefit of the doubt regarding a charge of divine inadequacy toward human suffering.

Mary, did you consent?

AbstractThe Christian and Islamic doctrine of the virgin birth claim God asexually impregnated the Virgin Mary with Jesus, Mary's impregnation was fully consensual (virgin consent), and God never acts immorally (divine goodness). First, I show that God's actions and Mary's background beliefs undermine her consent by virtue of coercive incentives, Mary's comparative powerlessness, and the generation of moral conflicts. Second, I show that God's non-disclosure of certain reasonably relevant facts undermines Mary's informed consent. Third, I show that a recent attempt by Jack Mulder to rescue virgin consent fails. As divine goodness and virgin consent are more central to orthodoxy, Christians and Muslims have powerful reason to reject virgin birth.

On the Significance of Assumptions about Divine Goodness and Divine Ontology for ‘Logical’ Arguments from Evil

Sterba’s Is a Good God Logically Possible? (2019) draws attention to the importance of ethical assumptions in ‘logical’ arguments from evil (LAfEs) to the effect that the existence of (certain types) of evil is incompatible with the existence of a God who is all-powerful and morally perfect. I argue, first, that such arguments are likely to succeed only when ‘normatively relativized’—that is, when based on assumptions about divine goodness that may be subject to deep disagreement. I then argue that these arguments for atheism are also, and more fundamentally, conditioned by assumptions about the ontology of the divine. I criticise Sterba’s consideration of the implications for his own novel LAfE of the possibility that God is not a moral agent, arguing that Sterba fails to recognize the radical nature of this claim. I argue that, if we accept the ‘classical theist’ account that Brian Davies provides (interpreting Aquinas), then God does not count as ‘an’ agent at all, and the usual contemporary formulation of ‘the problem of evil’ falls away. I conclude by noting that the question of the logical compatibility of evil’s existence with divine goodness is settled in the affirmative by classical theism by appeal to its doctrine that evil is always the privation in something that exists of the good that ought to be.

EL VALOR DE LA EXPERIENCIA MÍSTICA EN EL PENSAMIENTO DE MARSILIO FICINO

En el presente artículo desarrollaremos el problema del amor y la mística en el pensamiento de Marsilio Ficino haciendo un recorrido por sus principales teorías: su cosmología y su concepción sobre la naturaleza humana, su teoría sobre la prisca theologia, vinculada a su defensa de una pia philosophia y, por último, el furor divino y la melancolía en sintonía con la experiencia mística. Asimismo, en este trabajo, desarrollamos el significado del amor en relación con la belleza, comprendiendo que el amor no es otra cosa que deseo de belleza y la belleza, por su parte, no es otra cosa que el esplendor de la bondad divina. Evaluaremos hasta qué punto en cada una de las teorías mencionadas, encontramos relación con la contemplación y la vía mística dirigida hacia el conocimiento de la divinidad. En suma, el objetivo principal del artículo es examinar el papel que juega el misticismo en el pensamiento de Marsilio Ficino.

ROBOTIC AI, CRISPR, AND FREE WILL

ROBOTIC AI, CRISPR, AND FREE WILL

Divine Power, Friendship, and Theodicy

Abstract This article examines the kind of power available to a God worthy of worship, in connection with the prospect for a full theodicy for the world’s suffering and evil. It portrays how such a God would seek to relate to people with uncoerced reconciliation to God as a gift having definite expectations of them. To that end, God would be elusive and hidden at times, including regarding ultimate purposes, to minimize the alienation of humans from God. We have no good reason to suppose that God would reveal divine purposes to humans in a way that gives them a full theodicy. Similarly, we have no good reason to acknowledge a certain kind of limitation in divine power over evil, but, given divine goodness, we would expect to have such a clear reason if God had such a limitation. The absence of the latter clear reason counts against a proposed full theodicy.

One Earth, Many Futures, No Destination

Since the first Earth Day 50 years ago, it has become clear that it is easier to generate scientific insight into the ways human systems are altering the planet than it is to redirect those human systems to lessen their planetary impact. At the heart of this conundrum are divergent human values.

“While We Were Yet Enemies”

Abstract A distinctive contribution of Protestant dogmatics is its account of the interrelation of divine grace and human sin in which saving grace comes upon fallen, sinful humanity. What is most evangelically interesting and significant to Reformed faith is that God graciously acts precisely for creatures who are turned away from and pitched against divine goodness, against divine vocation, and against divine love. Thus, to ask and answer the question of ‘nature and grace’ as such is not yet to have set the question of grace in its most significant and telling register. In conversation with insights from the Didache, the apostle Paul, and early modern Reformed doctrines of sin, this essay argues that we do not win the measure of divine grace unless and until we meet it in connection with our godlessness and enmity, that is, in God’s saving confrontation with radical human sinfulness.

Genèse du Dieu souverain (Archéologie de la puissance II) by Gwenaëlle Aubry

Reviewed by: Genèse du Dieu souverain (Archéologie de la puissance II) by Gwenaëlle Aubry Martin Pickavé Gwenaëlle Aubry. Genèse du Dieu souverain (Archéologie de la puissance II). Bibliothèque d'Histoire de la Philosophie. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2018. Pp. 320. Paper, €36.00. As the subtitle indicates, and the introduction explains in more detail, this is a sequel to Aubry's 2006 book, Dieu sans la puissance. Dunamis et energeia chez Aristote et chez Plotin. In the present as well as in the previous studies, the author traces the developments and transformations undergone by the notion of power (dunamis, potentia) and in particular how these transformations affect the understanding of God. Whereas the first study follows the development from Aristotle's account of the divine being to Plotinus, the present volume covers, in five densely written chapters, medieval philosophers from Augustine to John Duns Scotus. According to the author, the history of the notion of power reflects two broad shifts, which she sets out to explore in her overall project: one from an Aristotelian ontology based on the act-potency distinction to an ontology relying on the distinction between power and action, and another from a God of pure actuality to an omnipotent God. Despite the overall ambition, it is best to approach this book as a set of almost independent studies around the problem of divine omnipotence. In the first chapter, the author examines Augustine's views on divine omnipotence. As Aubry points out, divine omnipotence goes hand in hand with divine goodness for Augustine. That God is good does not mean that God's omnipotence is restricted, nor can God's omnipotence be a reason for abandoning what is good. She points to Augustine's struggle with Manicheanism as one of the motives behind the strong link between goodness and omnipotence, and deals with some of the problems Augustine's account seems to face. For why is there evil and damnation if God is not only good but also all powerful? This is an incredibly rich chapter, which also covers Augustine's views on powers in creatures. Not all medieval authors managed to maintain the delicate balance between divine goodness and omnipotence. In the second chapter, Aubry contrasts two thinkers, Peter Damian and Peter Abelard, who drew completely opposing consequences from divine [End Page 814] omnipotence. Whereas for Peter Damian it guarantees the radical contingency of the creation, for Abelard it means that the existing created world is the best possible world, which also means that it was necessary for God to create it as it is. As Aubry shows convincingly, their differences in how they understand and prioritize divine goodness lead them to their diverging conclusions. The third (and shortest) chapter examines how the understanding of divine omnipotence changes during the thirteenth century up to the condemnations of 1277 and contrasts this development with the emergence of the famous distinction between God's absolute and ordained power. The author makes a good case for what she calls the autonomisation of divine omnipotence during this period. The last two chapters deal with two main figures in medieval philosophy: Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus. Aquinas provides Aubry with a good case study for how the Aristotelian idea of God as pure actuality is thought to be compatible with a conception of God as omnipotent. Although the main preoccupations of the previous chapters take a back seat here, this compact section does a good job elucidating Aquinas's conception of the first being and how the latter can shed light on Aquinas's ontology of created beings. Not surprisingly, the chapter on Duns Scotus takes up his novel account of the will and contingency, which has major implications for how Duns Scotus conceives of divine omnipotence; for it is here, as the author argues, that we can find contingency transferred from what is in potency to the omnipotence of the first cause. Unlike other books covering ambitious topics over a period of almost nine hundred years, Aubry's study avoids hopping from one canonical figure to the next. In this very erudite book, she gives voice not only to Augustine, Aquinas...