In Freedom, Teleology, and Evil Stewart Goetz defends the existence of libertarian freedom of the will. He argues that choices are essentially uncaused events with teleological explanations in the form of reasons or purposes. Because choices are uncaused events with teleological explanations, whenever agents choose they are free to choose otherwise. Given this freedom to choose otherwise, agents are morally responsible for how they choose. Thus, Goetz advocates and defends the principle of alternative possibilities which states that agents are morally responsible for a choice only if...

Philosophy and the Christian Worldview is a collection of new essays written by fifteen philosophers of religion. Bringing together some of the leading lights in current academic philosophy of religion, including William Hasker, Charles Taliaferro and Keith Yandell, it offers a fresh perspective on four major areas of discussion: Religion and Epistemology; Religion and Morality; Religion and Metaphysics; and Religion and Worldview Assessment.

United by the argument that the core claims of religion have metaphysical, epistemic and moral entailments, these essays represent a...

The notion that hell is everlasting and also a place of unending suffering inevitably gives rise to the following question for theists: how could an omnipotent, all-good and all-loving God allow anyone to suffer the torments of hell for eternity? The problem of hell is arguably the most severe form of the problem of evil because the evil found in hell is eternal with no possibility for redemption. Thus, the doctrine of hell gives rise to a moral problem caused by the apparent incompatibility between God's goodness and everlasting torment in hell. There have been several attempts to shore...

Contemporary debates on God's emotionality are divided between two extremes. Impassibilists deny God's emotionality on the basis of God's omniscience, omnipotence and incorporeality. Passibilists seem to break with tradition by affirming divine emotionality, often focusing on the idea that God suffers with us.

Contemporary philosophy of emotion reflects this divide. Some philosophers argue that emotions are voluntary and intelligent mental events, making them potentially compatible with omniscience and omnipotence. Others claim that emotions are involuntary and basically...

The question of whether religious experience can be trusted has been hotly debated in epistemology and philosophy of religion in recent years. Kwan surveys this contemporary philosophical debate, provides in-depth analysis of the crucial issues, and offer arguments for an affirmative answer to the above question.

Kwan first argues against traditional empiricist epistemologies and defends Swinburne's Principle of Credulity which holds that we should trust our experiences unless there are special considerations to the contrary. The Principle of Credulity is renamed the Principle of...

Free Will in Philosophical Theology takes the most recent philosophical work on free will and uses it to elucidate and explore theological doctrines involving free will. Rather than being a work of natural theology, it is a work in what has been called clarification--using philosophy to understand, develop, systematize, and explain theological claims without first raising the justification for holding the theological claims that one is working with. Timpe's aim is to show how a particular philosophical account of the nature of free will--an account known as source incompatibilism--can help...

Most contemporary versions of moral realism are beset with difficulties. Many of these difficulties arise because of a faulty conception of the nature of goodness. Goodness, God, and Evil lays out and defends a new version of moral realism that re-conceives the nature of goodness.

Alexander argues that the adjective 'good' is best thought of as an attributive adjective and not as a predicative one. In other words, the adjective 'good' logically cannot be detached from the noun (or noun phrase) that it modifies. It is further argued that this conception of the function of the...

Well-Being and Theism is divided into two distinctive parts. The first part argues that desire-fulfillment welfare theories fail to capture the 'good' part of 'good for', and that objective list welfare theories fail to capture the 'for' part of 'good for'. Then, with the aim of capturing both of these parts of 'good for', a hybrid theory-one which places both a value constraint and a desire constraint on well-being-is advanced. Lauinger then defends this proposition, which he calls the desire-perfectionism theory, against possible objections.

In the second part, Lauinger explores...

The question of God's relationship to abstract objects touches on a number of perennial concerns related to the nature of God. God is typically thought to be an independent and self-sufficient being. Further, God is typically thought to be supremely sovereign such that all reality distinct from God is dependent on God's creative and sustaining activity. However, the view that there are abstract objects seems to be a repudiation of this traditional understanding of God. Abstract objects are typically thought to exist necessarily and it is natural to think that if something exists...

The question of God's relationship to abstract objects touches on a number of perennial concerns related to the nature of God. God is typically thought to be an independent and self-sufficient being. Further, God is typically thought to be supremely sovereign such that all reality distinct from God is dependent on God's creative and sustaining activity. However, the view that there are abstract objects seems to be a repudiation of this traditional understanding of God. Abstract objects are typically thought to exist necessarily and it is natural to think that if something exists...