God Of Theism Research Articles

A Reply to Morriston’s Objection to Plantinga’s Free Will Defense

The logical problem of evil holds that the existence of the theistic God, who is considered omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, is logically incompatible with the existence of evil. Since there is evil in the world, the existence of the theistic God is then logically impossible. Alvin Plantinga has argued that if God has a good reason to allow evil to exist, the logical problem of evil fails. And the good reason that God has might be the great value of significant freedom – the freedom to choose between moral good and evil. Wesley Morriston objects that Plantinga’s free will defense is incompatible with one of the components of his ontological argument that God is omnibenevolent in every possible world. This paper aims to show that Morriston mistakenly assumes that the free will defense theorist holds the account of significant freedom for both human and divine freedom. If I am right, Plantinga’s defense of free will can meet Morriston’s objection.

The Epistemology of Religion

Entertaining a proposition normally exposes our mind to a range of psychic states, ranging from involuntary to voluntary states, depending on the irresistibility of the proposition in question. There are some propositions which are too certain to entertain without believing them, and some too vague, too suspicious to hold without some degree of doubt. Normally, we relate to any matter we consider in one of these three different propositional attitudes: (dis)belief, acceptance (or rejection) or suspension of judgment. Though religion cannot be confined solely to acceptance of or a belief in the theistic God, as religions like Buddhism and Hinduism demonstrate, it is commonplace in ordinary language to think of religion in terms of having a belief in a transcendent being, a deity, at least in the Christian, Jewish or Muslim cultures. Most religions assert themselves as an account of the universe, human condition or their nature. Some people believe its explanations, some merely accept them. That is, religion can be a belief-system about the universe. But it may lack such belief-system, and could be a matter of mere acceptance. There are people who do not believe religious explanations about the origin of life or the universe, but they still accept them as a way of life. In this article, I aim to analyze the psychological bridge, in the way of belief and mere acceptance, between us and the idea there is a God in light of the existing evidence for and against the existence of God, assuming that we are dealing with rational agency.

The Free Will Defense and the Problem of Heavenly Freedom

According to the logical problem of evil, the co-existence of evil and the theistic God who is considered to be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent is impossible. The fact that our world contains evils invalidates the existence of the theistic God. A libertarian theistic response to this problem, the free will defense, holds that if God actually has or could have a sufficient reason to actualize a world containing evils, the problem fails. This good reason, according to the defense, might be significant freedom, the freedom to choose between moral good and evil. Yujin Nagasawa, Graham Oppy, and Nick Trakakis, however, approach this debate from a different angle and argue that the traditional theistic view of heaven is a problem for this theistic response when we ask whether there is freedom in heaven. They contend that if the inhabitants of heaven do not have significant freedom, free will cannot be a great good that gives God a good reason to create a world containing evils. Thus, the free will defense fails. In this paper, I claim that this is mistaken. I argue that even though the inhabitants of heaven are not free in the most robust sense (i.e. they are no longer capable of sinning), this does not show that significant freedom is not a great good that justifies God’s creating a world containing evils.

That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation by David Bentley Hart

Reviewed by: That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation by David Bentley Hart Glenn B. Siniscalchi David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019. Pp. 224. $16.00, paper. Recognizing that certain expressions of Christianity have taught that everyone will see the beatific vision, Hart maintains that the doctrine of universal salvation has frequently been the minority viewpoint within Christian communities. However, that minority stance does not prevent Hart from arguing persuasively that the credibility of the gospel message is at stake in this debate. This book is a mesmerizing defense of the claim that everyone will freely submit to the Christian God. This is not to say that all beliefs concerning damnation are logically incoherent, but one should acknowledge the strength of Hart’s theological and philosophical arguments in That All Shall be Saved that the fires of hell will cleanse the unrepentant of the shortcomings that prevented them from cooperating with the Reign of God during their earthly lifetimes. Each of four meditations focuses on a distinct argument in support of the basic thesis of the book. Following the lead of Gregory of Nyssa, for instance, the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo reinforces the theology of God as the origin and destiny of all human beings. The second meditation discusses some of the complicated issues related to the proper translations and exegesis of the biblical texts (and whether the doctrine of an eternal hell is biblically based). Hart offers a plethora of textual evidence that the doctrine of universal restoration is firmly rooted in the scriptures. The third meditation continues the tradition of classical Christian thought on the collective nature of the identity of human beings. To state the case succinctly, if one person is saved, we must conclude that everyone will reach heavenly bliss. In Hart’s words, “Finite persons are not self-enclosed individual substances; they are dynamic events of relations to what is other than themselves” (p. 151). The last meditation concentrates on the nature of freedom as a condition of being for responsibility and excellence, not as the mere ability to choose between competing options. With this traditional understanding of human freedom in the background, the onus is placed on whether the intellect is able to see the good and the true in a fallen world. God’s grace therefore becomes paramount in guiding human beings toward their final ends. Reading this book as a Catholic theologian with a strong interest in fundamental theology, interfaith dialogue, and the philosophy of religion, I have been fascinated by Hart’s scholarly publications and public lectures, many of which are available online. These have played a major role in convincing me that his depiction of the eschatological horizon is correct. Catholic scholars who live with anxieties about the incompatibilities between conciliar teachings and belief [End Page 125] in universal restoration are strongly encouraged to consult Trent Pomplun’s article, “Heat and Light: David Bentley Hart on the Fires of Hell,” Modern Theology 37 (April, 2021): 523–530. Many intellectuals have discussed Hart’s works in several respectable forums, but, when their reviews and commentaries are carefully interpreted, one becomes perplexed by the misrepresentations of the arguments in support of select universalist positions. As long as one accepts a few other foundational beliefs about the nature of a theistic God and Christianity, the cumulative effect of the case that is presented in Hart’s book will likely remain irrefutable. Glenn B. Siniscalchi Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology, St. Meinrad, IN Copyright © 2023 Journal of Ecumenical Studies

Evil Prevention Requirements and the God of Theism

The central argument of James Sterba’s “Is a Good God Logically Possible?” relies crucially on the notion that a good God would have to abide by various evil prevention requirements. Because it appears that God has not done so, Sterba concludes that God does not exist. I challenge the notion that theists must accept the notion that God is bound by the particular set of evil prevention requirements Sterba’s argument presupposes. However, I argue that investigating ways God may in fact be required to prevent evils may serve as a helpful heuristic for theists as they seek further to understand God’s nature and purposes.

Does the Analogy of an Ideal State Disprove God’s Existence? James Sterba’s Argument and a Thomistic Response

This paper provides an analysis of James Sterba’s argument from evil in the world and the author’s Thomistic counterargument. Many authors of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion discuss the concept of “horrendous evils”, which is a representative name for pointless evil and suffering in the world. Sterba claims that the existence of such evil is not logically compatible with the existence of the all-good theistic God. If such a God existed, according to Sterba, he would have intervened in time and prevented and not permitted horrendous evil consequences; in other words, he would have acted as an ideal state. The author of this paper argues that the analogy of an ideal state does not disprove the existence of God of theism. Furthermore, people would prefer if God was not like an ideal state. Applying the characteristics of an ideal state to a theistic God is not reasonable because it relies on anthropomorphism. Such anthropomorphism is incoherent with some basic theistic beliefs. The author of this paper applies Thomistic concepts to the problem of horrendous evils.

Dewi Zephaniah Phillips’in Teodise Eleştirisi

The problem of evil, which is one of the important issues of contemporary philosophy of religion, is one of the important arguments expressed in the context of objection to the existence of God. This argument, which we can trace back to Epicurus, is by D. Hume, “Is God willing to prevent evil but not able to? Then He is powerless. Does he have the power but does not want to prevent it? So he wants evil to happen. If he is both able and good, then where does this evil come from?” It has been put forward in a question format that leaves a dilemma in the form of a question. Contemporary philosophers such as J. L. Mackie, on the other hand, argued that God's absolute goodness, might and existence of evil contradict each other, and argued that the three premises mentioned cannot coexist, and therefore the theistic God conception would be contradictory within itself. The problem of evil has been discussed by various philosophers from different aspects within the framework of the analytical philosophy tradition, which is one of the important philosophical schools of the modern period. In this context, logical positivism, which represents the first period of the analytical philosophy tradition and found its expression in Wittgestein's first period work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, found all fields of knowledge meaningless, except verifiable factual propositions, on the grounds that they are metaphysical. Therefore, since the general issues of theism, especially the problem of evil, fall within the scope of the aforementioned metaphysical field, it has been declared as a meaningless and non-factual type of knowledge by logical positivism. However, in the process, the principle of strict verification fell out of favor and the theory of language games and the basic issues of theism of the second Wittgenstein period began to be evaluated within the "types of knowledge that can be talked about". According to the theory of language games, just as different games (there are different language games and each of them) have their own rules, language also has its own rules. Anyone who does not know the rules of football will have difficulty in understanding the game played, and someone who does not know the rules of the language will have difficulty in understanding the subject. D. Z. Phillips, one of the Wittgensteinian philosophers, also radically adapted the theory of language games to the philosophy of religion. He argues that religious belief is a language game of its own and has no relation to the factual field (non-realism). According to him, evaluating propositions such as "God is good" or "God is mighty" in philosophical or scientific contexts leads us to the wrong path. Since the language of the context in which they are expressed is different, it cannot be discussed within thought systems that have different language games such as philosophy, which has a unique language world. The problem of evil should also be evaluated in this context. In a statement that "God is good", "God" no longer refers to a particular object or person. Here, only a feeling of “trust” can be mentioned. Again, when it is said that "God has infinite power", "a feeling of refuge" can be mentioned. However, this does not indicate the existence of the "God" object. According to Hick, these statements of Phillips are expressions of atheism in a different way. Therefore, this is unacceptable from the point of view of theism, as it denies the very idea of god. Phillips criticizes the philosophical solutions to the problem of evil, especially Swinburne. In this context, he criticizes the free will defense of Phillips Swinburne and Plantinga from various perspectives. Again, he deals with the views that the existence of evil and the existence of God can be defended together, that is, theodicies one by one, and tries to show that they are not successful. He also criticizes the theodicy, such as "spiritual maturation theodicy", "atonement theodicy", "defense of cognitive limitation", which were put forward to respond to evil from the theist perspective, in the context of different types of evil such as the holocaust, mental and physical suffering. Thus, he tried to evaluate and support the claim that the theism's statements about the problem of evil should not be seen as philosophical propositions from the perspective of Wittgensteinian language games.

Neoclassical Theism as Inherently Dialogical

The position usually called “process theism” is seldom called this by one of its most important defenders, Charles Hartshorne. The label he typically uses is “neoclassical theism”. It is important to notice that these two designations are not equivalent. To speak of process theism is to accentuate the differences between this metaphysical view and an opposing metaphysical stance, that of traditional or substantialist theism. By way of contrast, to speak of neoclassical theism is not to accentuate differences but rather the inclusion of one metaphysical tradition within another. That is, the neoclassical theism of Hartshorne (along with that of A.N. Whitehead, John Cobb, and David Ray Griffin, et al.) is both “neo” and “classical”. The compatibility between the best insights of classical theism and the best in neoclassical theism is evidenced in Hartshorne’s startling claim that he learned almost as much from St. Thomas Aquinas as he did from Whitehead! Although Hartshorne spent a good deal of his career pointing out that classical theism was shipwrecked on certain rocks of contradiction (neo), Thomas, more than anyone else, has provided us with an admirable chart showing the location of the rocks (classical). Three different topics will be emphasized in my defense of the thesis that “process theism” tends to be a polemical designation, in contrast to the more irenic “neoclassical theism”. The first of these is the contrast between monopolar and dipolar metaphysics. In the divine case, the neoclassical theist emphasizes the claim that, in partial contrast to the classical theistic God who does not in any way change, God always changes, and both of these words are important. The second topic is the commonplace in “process” thought that one of the most important passages in the history of metaphysical writing is in Plato’s Sophist (247e), where it is suggested that being is power or dynamis, specifically the power, however slight, both to affect other beings and to be affected by them. The third topic is Whiteheadian prehension, wherein a metaphysical thinker in the present can literally grasp and include the best insights from previous metaphysical traditions and partially transform them by bringing them into a larger whole.

Божественная свобода, предмирное грехопадение и аргумент от сокрытости

The paper examines the hiddenness argument, originally developed in «Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason» (1993) by John Schellenberg. This argument is based on the notion of perfectly loving God eager to establish a personal relationship with everyone who is not resistant to Him. Since there are many unbelievers left ignorant about God without any fault on their part, God is not perfectly loving. If unsurpassable love is a necessary attribute of theistic God, as Schellenberg maintains, it follows that theistic God does not exist. Two possible objections against this reasoning are highlighted. First, it could be argued that theistic God has absolute freedom rather than unlimited love. In this case He is free to hide or disclose Himself to anyone He deems suitable for this. Second, the hiddenness of God could be linked to the pre-mundane Fall, committed by the souls beyond the realm of visible things. Thus any form of unbelief is stemmed from the original resistance to God, even if some persons seem to be nonresistant in their present earthly lives. This model, inspired by the teachings of Eastern Church Fathers, helps to reconcile hiddenness of God with His unsurpassable love to all the creatures.

Should God believe the Liar? A non-dialetheist paraconsistent approach to God’s Omniscience

In this paper, we discuss a family of arguments that show the inconsistency of the concept of omniscience, which is one of the central attributes of the theistic God. We introduce three member of this family: Grim’s Divine Liar Paradox, Milne’s Paradox and our own Divine Curry. They can be seen as theological counterparts of well-known semantic paradoxes. We argue that the very simple dialetheist response to these paradoxes doesn’t work well and then introduce our own response based on a framework that we call Logic of Impossible Truths (LIT). LIT is a non-dialetheist paraconsistent logic designed to represent divine ominiscience and to preserve the transparency of the truth predicate and which semantics rests on the concept of situation. Since some rules of classical logic are not valid in LIT, we are in a position to block the derivation of the paradoxes. Thus, LIT offers a way out of the dilemma of accepting that there are true contradictions (dialetheism) or giving up the idea that there is an all-powerful, omniscient and perfectly good being (atheism).

Roles of Religiosity, Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms, Scrupulosity, and Shame in Self-Perceived Pornography Addiction: A Preregistered Study.

This study examined the roles of religiosity, shame, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, and scrupulosity in perceived pornography addiction. We theorized that religiosity causes pornography users to feel shame regarding their use, and in turn, self-identify as addicted to pornography, especially for individuals high on one of several proposed moderators. Participants were 645-646 pornography users who believe in a theistic God. Confirmatory analyses indicated that religious primes did not have indirect or moderated indirect effects on perceived addiction. However, exploratory analyses revealed that religious primes were associated with higher shame, and in turn, perceived addiction among individuals high on both organizational religiosity and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder compulsivity subscales. Additionally, self-reported religiosity had indirect effects on perceived addiction via shame, especially among individuals high on scrupulosity or moral disapproval of pornography.

A Theodicy of Kenosis: Eleonore Stump and the Fall of Jericho

AbstractWhen Joshua came to Jericho and encountered the captain of the LORD’s host, his stance appears much like the theodicist, who, facing the awful prospects of suffering, evil, or death, seeks assurance from God, asking, “are you for us or our adversaries?” (Jos 5:13). Yet the angel’s reply is not “yes,” as typical theodicies seek to answer on God’s behalf, but “No; rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the LORD.” (Jos 5:14) The implication is political: the angel seeks to alter Joshua’s stance from one ordered to his own purposes to one ordered to the LORD’s. Like traditional theodicies, Eleonore Stump’s Wandering in Darkness (2010) does not sufficiently establish why a theistic God must create a world where, to preserve our capacity to freely love God, suffering is caused or permitted. I avoid this problem by finding a “kenotic” aspect in the action of signs in which the perennial problems of suffering and evil do not arise, and which is available to direct experience, making it empirically falsifiable in principle. Like the angel’s reply to Joshua, this invites a change from a speculatively grounded stance representing the hopes of a theodicist, to one formed from real interactions that transcend discourse.

A Brief Overview of the Many Alternatives to Classical Theism, and How to Decide between Them

Abstract In the analytic Philosophy of Religion, much ink has been spilt on the existence of some sort of supernatural reality. Such work is usually done by theists, those who find classical theism to be probably true. It is my contention that the premises invoked in the common arguments or derivations for God’s existence do not necessarily lead to the god of theism. In this article, I note that these premises could also lead to various alternative naturalistic and supernaturalistic hypotheses (some of which are actualised throughout the non-Western world). As such, the main focus here is on describing some of the many naturalistic and supernaturalistic alternatives to classical theism, especially since several of these alternatives are generating discussion in the recent literature; explaining why a number of these alternatives are considered plausible by their proponents; and proposing how we might decide which theory is true, eventually endorsing a Bayesian approach.

Christian Lay Theodicy and The Cancer Experience

Christian Lay Theodicy and The Cancer Experience

Theistic modal realism and causal modal collapse

AbstractTheistic modal realism argues for an extension of Lewis's modal realism capable of accommodating a theistic God. By affording elegant solutions to many atheistic challenges, the view is of great theoretical utility for the theist. However, it has been objected that within a Lewisian framework God cannot be causally efficacious on pain of collapsing intuitively distinct modal notions. In this article I explain why these worries are ill-founded and show how God's existence and causal power over the pluriverse can be consistently understood. If successful, the proposal offers a congenial theistic way to adopt modal realism and address the atheological problems.

EROS AND LOGOS

For the ancient Greeks, the world was both Eros, the god of chaos and creativity, and Logos, the regularity of the heavens as law. From chaos the world came forth. The world was home to ultimate creativity. Two thousand years later Kepler, Galileo, and then mighty Newton created deterministic classical physics in which all that happens in the universe is determined by the laws of motion, initial and boundary conditions. The Theistic God who worked miracles became the Deistic God who set up the universe and let Newton’s laws take over. Eros, raw creativity, is dead, all is Logos.Quantum mechanics replaced the determinism of classical physics with fundamental indeterminism. This was a major crisis in physics, but remained entirely within the Newtonian paradigm of laws, here the Schrödinger equation, initial and boundary conditions. The Schrödinger equation entails the deterministic propagation of a probability distribution. The probabilities concern the indeterminate outcomes of quantum measurement events.The central issue of this article is to show that no laws at all determine or entail the becoming of our biosphere or any other among the 1022 solar systems in the universe. This claim is radical. If no laws determine or entail the becoming of biospheres, and biospheres are part of the universe, the Pythagorean dream that All is Number, All is Logos, is dead. There is no Final Theory that entails all that become in the universe. Eros is again, and always was, rambunctiously alive in the raw creativity of the becoming of life anywhere in the universe. The becoming of life is based on physics, on Logos, but beyond it, emerging from Eros.The reasons Eros is at play in the evolution of biospheres are fourfold.First, the universe will not make all possible complex things. That is, the universe is vastly non-ergodic. Yet complex things such as the human heart exist.Second, the reason human hearts exist is that organisms are Kantian Wholes in which the parts exist for and by means of the whole. Hearts exist because they fulfill the function of pumping the blood that keeps the whole organism alive. Such organisms propagate progeny that carry with them the hearts that keep them alive.Third, adaptations like hearts, the flagellar motor, the loop of Henle in kidneys that concentrates urine, and flight feathers, are tinkered-together contraptions stumbled upon in evolution. Parts and processes that arise in evolution are jury-rigged for unprestatable new functions that help keep the entire Kantian Whole organism alive and propagating in the evolving biosphere. There is no deductive theory of jury rigging. We cannot deduce the emergence of such novel functions.Fourth, the functions of parts of organisms emerge in unprestatable ways and form the unprestatable and ever-changing phase space of evolution. Since we cannot prestate the ever-changing phase space of evolution, we can write no laws of motion in differential equation form, so cannot integrate the equations we do not have. Thus, no laws entail the becoming of any biosphere.Evolving biospheres are everywhere creative. This is Eros, the chaos from which the world emerges. This profound creative emergence is the stuff of story, of narrative. Evolving biospheres always were and always will be both Eros and Logos, the stuff of story and the stuff of law. We always live in a world of Art and Science.

The Prospects for Debunking Non-Theistic Belief

According to The Debunking Argument, evidence from the cognitive science of religion suggests that it is epistemically inappropriate to persist in believing in the theistic God. In this paper, I focus on a reply to this argument according to which the evidence from cognitive science says nothing about the epistemic propriety of belief in the theistic God, since God may have chosen to create human beliefs in God by means of precisely the systems identified by cognitive scientists. I argue that this reply can be extended to a variety of non-theistic contexts, and consequently that if the reply is sound, then the scope of The Debunking Argument is surprisingly limited.

On the Objective Meaningful Life Argument: A Response to Kirk Lougheed

Kirk Lougheed has argued that the Objective Meaningful Life Argument establishes a type of anti-theism, the view that a theistic God’s existence would make things worse and thus it’s rational to prefer that God not exist. The objective version of this argument is said to be an improvement over my subjective version of the Meaningful Life Argument. I argue that Lougheed’s version fares no better than the subjective version.

Must God Be Dead? Reinventing the Sacred

ABSTRACTNewton became a death knell for a theistic God and for a non-epiphenominal mind. The culprit is the deterministic causal closure of classical physics. Two major revolutions are taking us beyond this closure. The first is Quantum Mechanics, which is non-deterministic. The second revolution may just be happening. The emergence and evolution of life in our or any biosphere is governed by no law at all. This freedom suggests one sense of God as the natural creativity of the Universe.

HAUERWAS'S WITH THE GRAIN OF THE UNIVERSE1 AND THE BARTHIAN OUTLOOK: A Few Observations

ABSTRACTThis article has two main divisions, the first consisting in parts 1–3, the second in parts 4–8. The purpose of the first division is to assess Hauerwas's contentions regarding what he takes to be serious debilities in modern theological culture. The objects of Hauerwas's criticism are: (1) natural theology; (2) reason as it is represented in the structure of the modern university and in the “Enlightenment Project”; and (3) liberal Protestantism—the latter particularly as it turns up, by his account, in Reinhold Niebuhr's theology. The article will offer a defense of natural theology and an alternative approach to Niebuhr's theology while showing how Hauerwas's contentions concerning these two matters are mistaken. Parts 4–8 are theological studies. These studies concentrate on selected though main aspects of Hauerwas's outlook. Part 4 concerns a problematic implication of the notion, mainly from Barth, of divinity's humanity; Part 5 a note of difficulty from William James about the idea of the theistic God and its pertinence to the Barthian or Hauerwasian God; Part 6 the relation between belief and witness; Part 7 theology's discourse and analogy; Part 8 the Barthian‐Hauerwasian theology as a metaphysics. Part 1, concerning natural theology, stands over both divisions. These observations are not in the main intended as textual studies, though in certain passages the analysis is closely attentive to Hauerwas's text. Also, the paper does not offer the sort of account that would come from a historian, intellectual biographer, or social or cultural analyst or critic. Its focus is philosophical‐theological criticism.