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Displaying: 1-11 of 11 documents


articles
1. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Daniel M. Johnson How Puzzles of Petitionary Prayer Solve Themselves: Divine Omnirationality, Interest-Relative Explanation, and Answered Prayer
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Some have seen in the divine attribute of omnirationality, identified by Alexander R. Pruss, the promise of a dissolution of the usual puzzles of peti­tionary prayer. Scott Davison has challenged this line of thought with a series of example cases. I will argue that Davison is only partially correct, and that the reasons for this reveal an important new way to approach the puzzles of petitionary prayer. Because explanations are typically interest-relative, there is not one correct account of “answered prayer” but many, corresponding to a variety of reasons to care whether God might answer our prayers. It follows from this that the omnirationality solution can be vindicated and that puz­zles of petitionary prayer that are not dissolved thereby will typically contain within themselves the seeds of their own solutions.
2. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Kenneth L. Pearce Are We Free to Break the Laws of Providence?
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Can I be free to perform an action if God has decided to ensure that I do not choose that action? I show that Molinists and simple foreknowledge theo­rists are committed to answering in the affirmative. This is problematic for their status as theological incompatibilists. I suggest that strategies for pre­serving their theological incompatibilism in light of this result should be based on sourcehood. However, the path is not easy here either, since Leibniz has shown how theological determinists can offer an extremely robust form of sourcehood. Proponents of these views must identify a valuable form of sourcehood their theories allow that Leibniz’s theory doesn’t.
3. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Andrew M. Bailey Magical Thinking
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According to theists, God is an immaterial thinking being. The main question of this article is whether theism supports the view that we too are immaterial thinking beings. I shall argue in the negative. Along the way, I will also explore some implications in the philosophy of mind following from the observation that, on theism, God’s mentality is in a certain respect magical.
4. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Caleb Cohoe Accounting for the Whole: Why Pantheism is on a Metaphysical Par with Complex Theism
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Pantheists are often accused of lacking a sufficient account of the unity of the cosmos and its supposed priority over its many parts. I argue that complex the­ists, those who think that God has ontologically distinct parts or attributes, face the same problems. Current proposals for the metaphysics of complex theism do not offer any greater unity or ontological independence than pantheism, since they are modeled on priority monism. I then discuss whether the for­mal distinction of John Duns Scotus offers a way forward for complex theists. I show that only those classical theists who affirm divine simplicity are better off with respect to aseity and unity than pantheists. Only proponents of divine simplicity can fairly claim to have found a fully independent ultimate being.
5. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Justin Mooney How God Knows Counterfactuals of Freedom
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One problem for Molinism that critics of the view have pressed, and which Molinists have so far done little to address, is that even if there are true coun­terfactuals of freedom, it is puzzling how God could possibly know them. I defuse this worry by sketching a plausible model of the mechanics of middle knowledge which draws on William Alston’s direct acquaintance account of divine knowledge.
6. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Martin Jakobsen Determining the Need for Explanation
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Several theistic arguments are formulated as arguments for the best explana­tion. This article discusses how one can determine that some phenomenon actually needs an explanation. One way to demonstrate that an explanation is needed is by providing one. The proposed explanation ought to either make the occurrence of the phenomenon in question more probable than it occur­ring by chance, or it has to sufficiently increase our understanding of the phe­nomenon. A second way to demonstrate that an explanation is needed is to show that the phenomenon in question both violates our expectations and is particularly noticeable.
book reviews
7. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Michael Bergmann Nathan Ballantyne, Knowing Our Limits
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8. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Andrew W. Arlig Blake Hereth and Kevin Timpe, eds., The Lost Sheep in Philosophy of Religion: New Perspectives on Disability, Gender, Race, and Animals
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9. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Sameer Yadav John H. McClendon III, Black Christology and the Quest for Authenticity: A Philosophical Appraisal
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10. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
John A. Keller Elliot Sober, The Design Argument
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11. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 37 > Issue: 2
Catherine Nolan Dietrich von Hildebrand with Alice von Hildebrand, Morality and Situation Ethics
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