St. Teresa worried over the genuineness of her mystical experience. Her worries have sense within a form of life. Pike argues that her claims must be downgraded if no justification of the form of life can be given. The Devil could deceive us about any justification, Mavrodes argues, but certain experiences can be self-authenticating. Treating forms of life as though they were interpretations, Katz concludes that we must be agnostic about their truth. The paper argues that confusions between forms of life and judgements within them lead these authors to conclusions which obscure the confessional character of truth in these contexts.

In this paper I offer a critique of Alvin Plantinga’s well known and widely accepted contention that his “Reformed” objection to natural theology can plausibly be said to derive from the writings of John Calvin and traditional Reformed theologians generally. I argue that although there is indeed a traditional Reformed objection to natural theology, Plantinga’s own objection is very different from and, in fact, incompatible with, it. I conclude that whatever the merits of Plantinga’s own position, it should not be confounded with that of Calvin or the Reformed tradition.

This essay explores the significance and implications of the causal theory of reference for the current debate on the necessity and exchangeability of the divine title ‘Father’ in the discourse of the Church. Identifying ‘Father’ as a vocative term historically grounded in the speech of Jesus and his Apostles, the authors assert that it successfully refers to God, functioning very much like a proper name. They also identify linguistic barriers to its replacement by other terms.

This paper carries forward the discussion initiated by the publication in 1986 of “A Refutation of Middle Knowledge.” Answers are given to two objections that have been raised against the original argument. Next, an alternative argument by Robert Adams is discussed; this argument has the advantage of avoiding reliance on one of the most controversial premises of the original argument. Finally, a definition is given for “S brings it about that Y,” and this definition is used to construct a proof of the “power entailment principle.”

Kalam cosmological arguments have recently been the subject of criticisms, at least inter alia, by physicists---Paul Davies, Stephen Hawking---and philosophers of science---Adolf Grunbaum. In a series of recent articles, William Craig has attempted to show that these criticisms are “superficial, iII-conceived, and based on misunderstanding.” I argue that, while some of the discussion of Davies and Hawking is not philosophically sophisticated, the points raised by Davies, Hawking and Grunbaum do suffice to undermine the dialectical efficacy of kalam cosmological arguments.

While William Rowe has argued that the principle of credulity does not lend justification to religious experience, he must affirm something quite like the principle of credulity in his empirical argument from evil. To do so Rowe has proposed a modified version of the principle of credulity.I shall argue that Rowe’s modified principle of credulity creates for him a dilemma regarding the justification of belief in other minds. I further suggest it is not adequate for bridging the logical gap between the existence of apparently pointless evils and the existence of genuinely pointless evil.

This paper continues a debate about the relation between Christian philosophers and theologians begun by Gordon Kaufman, who argued that Christian theologians need not be interested in “evidentialism.” In particular it replies to a paper by William Hasker charging that an earlier defense of Kaufman’s position introduced tensions because it required judgments about the merits of “evidentialism” which could be defended only by using the evidentialist arguments whose importance Kaufman denied. This reply denies that there are the tensions Hasker claims and argues that the judgments need not rest on a detailed assessment of evidentialist arguments.

Aquinas’s reflection on the relationship between faith and science took place amidst serious controversy about the acceptability of the very form of science Aquinas had adopted. Aquinas uses the Aristotelian conception of science and his own view of the place of theology and faith, to produce arguments for the compatibility of reason and science. I examine the arguments he presents in the Summa Contra Gentiles, and I criticize details of his arguments, but I endorse what I see as his general strategy.

In a pair of articles published in Faith and Philosophy, C. Stephen Evans argues that Kierkegaard’s pseudonym, Johannes Climacus, understands religious experience as the transforming power of an encounter with the love of God. However, in a book published under his own name, Kierkegaard gives a quite different picture of Christian experience. For Self-Examination makes clear that the reception of God’s love is a rebirth that can occur in the believer only insofar as he or she has died to the world - to all possessions, even to the possession of God’s love. According to Kierkegaard, this “dying to” is the truly transforming experience that characterizes Christian spirituality, and that provides the condition for a life infused with faith, hope, and love.