There is a general recognition that there are various self-identifying religions. Many people find the idea that these religions differ in significant ways altogether too distressing to accept. Thus Religious Pluralism is often taken to define the only unbiased, rational, and acceptable approach to the diversity of religions. In fact, the Pluralist route is anything but unbiased or rational. Rather than being the only acceptable approach, it should be flatly rejected. While proclaiming its respect to all nice religious traditions (ones that are not nice are simply cast out), it proposes a radical reshaping of religious traditions along the lines that it favors. Coming to clear terms with this imperialistic fact concerning Religious Pluralist procedures is no part of their agenda.

This paper contends that although many religious views are exclusive of each other, a morally perfect God worthy of worship would seek to include all willing people in lasting life with God. The paper distinguishes some different variations on religious exclusivism and inclusivism, and proposes an inclusive version of Christian exclusivism. The account implies that one can yield volitionally to God’s unselfish love and thereby to God de re, without any corresponding acknowledgment de dicto and thus without one’s knowing (or believing) that God exists. The paper finds the basis for this approach in the teachings of Jesus himself. In addition, the paper recruits a notion of kardiatheology to emphasize that a God worthy of worship would seek to transform the heart (or motivational center) of a wayward person even if this person does not (yet) believe that God exists.

Dispositional properties have been receiving an increasing amount of attention in the last decade from metaphysicians and philosophers of science. The proper semantics and ontology remains controversial. This paper offers an analysis and ontology of dispositional properties rooted in Christology and the biblical doctrine of creation. The analysis overcomes the standard problems faced by all such analyses and provides an account of “ungrounded dispositions.” The analysis involves a version of a Leibnizian-Aristotelian notion of possible worlds and provides a novel notion of truth-makers for subjunctive conditionals.

Knitter asks Moser if the soteriological inclusivism he is proposing for our understanding of God can also be extended to our understanding of Christ: Christ’s death and resurrection do not constitute or bring about saving grace; they reveal it, thus leaving room for the possibility of other revealers. For Yandell, Knitter first clarifies that the necessary conditions for dialogue are not established before but in the dialogue. He then urges an epistemic humility for all Christian philosophers in view of the ineffable Mystery of God—a Mystery that may well include, to the philosopher’s consternation, a “coinciding of opposites.”

This paper brings recent work in virtue epistemology to bear on the debate over design inferences. I intend to show that certain objections to William Dembski’s explanatory filter, in particular his specification condition, are on target, but that incorporating into the specification condition a notion borrowed from virtue epistemologists (a cognitive ability) makes the condition more understandable and immune to the criticisms that have been offered. I conclude by suggesting a way that one might flesh out the notion of a cognitive ability and revise Dembski’s account accordingly. This helps to advance the debate over design inferences.

I argue that there is an important sense in which God’s love is partial or preferential. In developing this argument, I appeal to Thomas Aquinas’s claim that God’s love for persons has the character of friendship. By its nature, friendship exhibits a considerable degree of partiality. For whether a person prefers to be united to another in friendship depends (in part) on whether the latter reciprocates the former’s affection and endorses those commitments conducive to fellowship. If God’s love is expressive of friendship (so described), then the sort of partiality some may wish to deny of his love may be one of its salient features.

In this essay we examine a recent proposal in Trinitarian theology. Analyzing the claim that the Son is necessarily subordinate to the Father, we argue that there are no good reasons to hold such a view but that there are strong reasons to reject it. The arguments made by Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem from the Christian tradition often rest upon fundamental misunderstandings of the theological issues at stake, their arguments from Scripture bring important—but flawed—metaphysical assumptions into the exegesis of biblical texts, and their own proposal is either hopelessly mired in contradiction or entails the direct denial of the full divinity of the Son.

Hannah Arendt distinguishes between labor (life-sustaining activity), work (creative activity), and action (activity directed toward maintaining human relationships). This paper extends Arendt’s framework to three corresponding forms of inactivity: incorporating leisure, play, and rest into a balanced, sixfold framework provides a robust, philosophical theology of work as divine-human cooperation. The philosopher’s life of leisure suggests a synthesis of Adam Smith’s and Karl Marx’s contrasting views on labor. An overview of biblical perspectives highlights a similarly paradoxical role for play in “the work” of divine creativity. Finally, an attitude of religious “rest” empowers us to transcend alienating tendencies in employer–employee relationships.

I argue that Graham Oppy’s attempt to redefend his charge that all modal theistic arguments “must be question-begging” is unsuccessful. Oppy’s attempt to show that theism and modal concretism are compatible is not only tangential for his purposes, it is marred by a misunderstanding of theism, and vulnerable to a counterexample that actually demonstrates incompatibility. Moreover, the notion of begging the question employed by Oppy against the theist is seen to be far too permissive.

In his “God and Modal Concretism,” Richard Davis criticizes the views developed in my “Modal Theistic Arguments.” I argue here that Davis misrepresents the views defended in my earlier paper: in particular, it is simply not true—as Davis claims—that I objected to modal ontological arguments on the grounds that they beg the question by presupposing that Lewis’s modal realism is false. In addition, I discuss—and argue against—some claims that Davis makes about circularity of argumentation and the fallacy of begging the question.

The transcendental argument for God’s existence (“TAG”) claims that the existence of the Triune God is a metaphysically necessary precondition for the most basic features of human life and experience. Philosopher Sean Choi has recently argued that TAG is best understood as having the following argument pattern: (1) p, (2) Necessarily, if p, then G (God exists), and therefore (3) G. In this note, I pose a dilemma argument for the proponent of the transcendental argument (understood this way). My hope is that the dilemma argument will spur further development and clarification of exactly what the transcendental argument is.

In his book Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, Bede Rundle argues that there is no need to appeal to God for an explanation concerning why the universe exists, and remains in existence. I argue that on the contrary, Rundle’s philosophical naturalism is unable to give a plausible account for the continued existence of the universe in a lawful manner and the objects of which it is composed. The major reason for this inability is that since, as Rundle admits, everything that exists has a logically contingent existence, there can be no necessary principle by which contingent objects are sustained in existence.

Twentieth-century analytic philosophy was dominated by positivist antimetaphysics and neo-Humean deflationary metaphysics, and the nature of explanation was reconceived in order to fit these agendas. Unsurprisingly, the explanatory value of theism was widely discredited. I argue that the long-overdue revival of a modalized, broadly neo-Aristotelian metaphysics and an improved perspective on modal knowledge dramatically changes the landscape. In this enriched context, there is no sharp divide between physics and metaphysics, and the natural end of the theoretician’s quest for a unified explanation of the universe is God, an absolutely necessary, transcendent, and personal source of all contingent reality.

Timothy O’Connor’s book Theism and Ultimate Explanation offers a defense of a new version of the cosmological argument. In his discussion, O’Connor argues against the coherence of a brute fact “explanation” of the universe and for the claim that the God of theism cannot be logically contingent. In this paper, I take issue with both of these arguments. Regarding the former, I claim that contrary to what O’Connor asserts, we have no good reason to prefer an account according to which the universe is explained via a necessary being to that of a naturalist who thinks that the universe is contingent and ultimately unexplained. Regarding the latter, I argue that the possibility of a logically contingent God is fully consistent with traditional theism.

Two important aspects of O’Connor’s Theism and Ultimate Explanation are explored. The first is whether God’s existence should be considered ontologically necessary. I suggest that although existence is essential to God, it is not a matter of ontological necessity. The second is whether prior to creating God deliberates about what universe or universes to create. I argue that he does not, that to say he does is to mistake creation for a kind of manufacturing. Implications of these claims regarding divine sovereignty are briefly discussed.

In Theism and Ultimate Explanation, Tim O’Connor sets out and defends a cosmological argument from contingency. In my paper—which might have been titled “Naturalism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency”—I argue that, even if you grant O’Connor his various controversial assumptions about modality and causality, the argument that he sets out provides stronger support for naturalism than it does for theism. In particular, I claim that considerations about theoretical and ontological parsimony favour a naturalistic necessary shape for contingency over a theistic necessary shape for contingency.