In his book The Existence of God, Professor Swinburne develops a cumulative case for theism. As part of this case, he presents two forms of the argument from design, one form taking as its premise the fact of spatial order, the other proceeding from the fact of temporal order. In this paper, I shall concern myself with the second of these arguments; that is, in Swinburne's terms, I shall concern myself with the argument from regularities of succession.

Thinking about God often leads to thinking about ‘God’. And it has never been completely clear how best to understand this little English word. Traditionally, ‘God’ has been taken to be either a description or a name. However, a third option has recently captured the attention of philosophical theologians. It is claimed that just as one should think of, say, ‘humanity’ as a kind term, so one should think of ‘God’, or perhaps ‘divinity’, as a kind term. But given the tight link between semantics and metaphysics, if one is tempted to understand ‘humanity’ or ‘divinity’ as kind terms, then one will naturally begin to think of humanity and divinity as kinds. Characterizing divinity this way, a primary task of philosophical theology is to give a characterization of the divine kind-essence. In this paper, I want to consider the claim that divinity is profitably construed as a kind-essence, and argue that the way that this has typically been understood is not altogether adequate. I shall then present and develop an alternative understanding of this kind-essence approach that takes the analogy of `supernatural kinds’ and natural kinds much more seriously. I will conclude by considering some objections.

Contemporary commentators on Hume's essay, ‘Of miracles’ have increasingly tended to argue that Hume never intended to suggest that testimonial evidence must always be insufficient to justify belief in a miracle. This is in marked contrast to earlier commentators who interpreted Hume as intending to demonstrate that testimonial evidence is incapable in principle of ever establishing rational belief in a miracle. In this article I argue that this traditional interpretation is the correct one.

In his 2000 Religious Studies article ‘Ineffability’, John Hick calls upon the Dionysian corpus to bear witness to the ‘transcategorality’ of God and thereby corroborate his comparative theology of pluralism. Hick's Dionysius avows God's transcendence of categories by negating God's names, while at the same time maintaining that such names are metaphorically useful means of uplifting humans to God. But herein reside three common misunderstandings of the Dionysian corpus: (1) the divine names are mere metaphors; (2) the divine names are therefore negated of God; and (3) the negation of divine names is the means by which humans return to and unite with God.

I am grateful for Mr Bagger's thoughtful remarks, as well as those of Professors Cousins, Smith, Katz, and Gimello at a recent American Academy of Religion panel devoted to The Problem of Pure Consciousness. But I cannot help but be struck by the tone of Mr Bagger's notice. As one colleague communicated to me after reading the piece, this is one of the most gratuitously rude pieces he had ever seen! If our book is really as bad as all this, it makes one wonder (a) why Religious Studies, or Mr Bagger, would bother to give it such attention, and (b) whether it indicates how deeply we have touched a nerve in the contemporary debate.

Although an immense amount has been written about miracles by philosophers – and theologicans of a philosophical turn of mind – to the point where no one wants to read any more on the subject, there are still two very good reasons for writing about miracles: (1) the concept of a miracle commonly employed simply will not do, so that most of the talk of discovering whether or not some event is miraculous is beside the point; (2) the proper way of looking at what a miracle is involves one in clarifying the very perplexing notions of agency and explanation, and both of these notions are interesting in their own right.

The free-will defence (FWD) holds that the value of significant free will is so great that God is justified in creating significantly free creatures even if there is a risk or certainty that these creatures will sin. A difficulty for the FWD, developed carefully by Quentin Smith, is that God is unable to do evil, and yet surely lacks no genuinely valuable kind of freedom. Smith argues that the kind of freedom that God has can be had by creatures, without a risk of creatures doing evil. I shall show that Smith's argument fails – the case of God is disanalogous to the case of creatures precisely because creatures are creatures.

In this brief reply to Walls's challenging critique, I try to do two things: first, clarify the most fundamental point on which I think Walls and I disagree, and second, argue that, as surprising as it may first appear, Walls's free-will theodicy of hell requires that God interfere with human freedom in inappropriate ways.

Michael J. Almeida offers two criticisms of the argument of my ‘A trilemma for divine command theory’. The first criticism is that I mistakenly assume the validity of the following inference pattern: property A is identical to property B; property B supervenes on property C; therefore, property A supervenes on property C. The second criticism is that I have misinterpreted the moral-supervenience thesis upon which I rely in making this argument. The first of Almeida's criticisms is completely untenable. The second of his criticisms casts doubt on my argument, a doubt that I can mitigate but not entirely dispel.

It is shown that, for certain classes of cosmological model which either postulate or give rise to infinitely many universes, only a measure zero subset of the set of possible universes above a given size can in fact be physically realized. It follows that claims to explain the fine tuning of our universe on the basis of such models by appeal to the existence of all possible universes fail.

The Christian doctrine of the Atonement has been interpreted in several ways. In Responsibility and Atonement, Richard Swinburne offers us a version of the sacrificial account of Christ's redemptive work. This version claims that in the life and death of Jesus we have a gift of great and fitting value, which God himself has made available to us, and which we can in turn offer to God as reparation and penance for our sins. My paper has two main parts. In the first I shall argue that his account is conceptually incoherent; in the second that it is morally flawed. I then briefly suggest that the exemplary theory can capture, better than can the reparation theory, those features which Swinburne believes to be desirable in any account of the Atonement. I take Swinburne's account as my target because it is the best modern exposition of the theory, but my argument is intended to have wider significance.

The Dutch writer Menno ter Braak once observed that when there is no bacon in the larder you tend to spend your time sharpening your knives. In a different context a somewhat similar remark concerning his preoccupation with the sharpening of his analytical tools was made by the philosopher Husserl. Applying these remarks—without the least intent of facetiousness—to the comparative study of religions, we might say that concern with methodology should be an occasional pastime, in which we may indulge at moments when we take an occasional respite from our substantive labours—but with plenty of bacon, as it were, in the larder. The quinquennial congresses of the International Association for the History of Religions are undoubtedly an appropriate occasion for such critical and reflective introspection. In fact, some of the best methodological clarifications come not from a priori legislators but from active researchers stepping back for a moment, putting some distance between their nose and the grindstone, and asking themselves what exactly they and their colleagues have been and are doing, and how they should best proceed. (I am thinking, e.g., of J. Schwab's penetrating and profound essay ‘What do Scientists do?’ as an outstanding example of such reflection by a natural scientist.) Whilst the sterility of abstract discussions about the definition of religion is generally admitted, it should be acknowledged that some exceedingly helpful suggestions have been made by practising field-workers and historians of religion. I am thinking of e.g., C. Geertz, M. Spiro, and Th. van Baaren. Other examples of the theoretical clarifications resulting from the interaction—addicts of the currently fashionable jargon would say ‘feedback’—between attempts at definition and the actual praxis of historians of religion are H. Ch. Puech's short introduction and A. Brelich's major Prolégomènes in vol. i of the Pléiade Histoire des Religions (1970), as well as U. Bianchi's thoughtful and thought-provoking recent contribution. Clearly students of religion continue to be very much exercised by the double problem of the nature of their subject-matter and of the proper methods of studying it.

Split brains that result in two simultaneous streams of consciousness cut off from each other are wrongly held to be grounds for doubting the existence of the divinely created soul. The mistake is based on two related errors: first, a failure to appreciate the soul's dependence upon neurological functioning; second, a fallacious belief that if the soul is simple, i.e. without parts, then there must be a unity to its thought, all of its thoughts being potentially accessible to reflection or even unreflective causal interactions. But a soul theorist can allow neurological events to keep some conscious thoughts unavailable to others.

In ‘Moral critique and defence of theodicy’ (2013) Samuel Shearn argues that ambitious theodicies trivialize horrendous suffering in an unacceptable way by reinterpreting evils in a way sufferers do not accept. Against Shearn, the authors of this article will argue that sufferer acceptance should not be used as a criterion for the moral acceptability of what theodicies say about horrendous evils. Also, since theodicy is done in the public square, Shearn does not find it relevant to distinguish between contexts in which it is morally improper to communicate theodicies and those in which it is not. We disagree, and present some arguments as to why making such distinctions is morally relevant. Furthermore Shearn argues that theodicy is self-defeating if it aims to comfort sufferers of horrendous evils. We will critically re-examine the examples used to support his conclusion, and suggest that theodicies do have a comforting function. Finally, Shearn describes the difference between theodicy and anti-theodicy as an aesthetic impasse, rather than a moral issue. Against this, we find good reasons to affirm its predominant moral character.

Counterfactuals of creaturely freedom (CCFs) are notoriously puzzling. One puzzle has to do with truth-making: we wonder how any CCFs could be true prior to the existence of all creatures. Another, less addressed puzzle has to do with truth-explaining: what antecedent conditions or facts might explain a given CCF? The usual answer to the ‘explanation’ question is that true CCFs are brute: nothing explains them. We motivate an alternative answer by arguing that there can be an explanation of CCFs if there can be an explanation of free actions. Our argument reveals that theoretical frameworks, such as Molinism, that make use of CCFs do not automatically carry an explanatory cost.

According to Plantinga's version of the free-will argument (FWA), the existence of free beings in the world who, on the whole, do more good than evil is the greater moral good that cannot be secured by even an omnipotent God without allowing some evil and thereby shows the logical compatibility of God with evil. In this essay, I argue that there are good empirical and moral reasons, from the standpoint of one plausible conception of Christian ethics, to doubt that Plantinga's version of the FWA succeeds as a theodicy. In particular, I argue that, given this understanding of Christian ethics, it seems reasonable to think it false that free beings are doing more good than evil in the world. While there are surely possible worlds in which free beings do more good than evil, this material world seems clearly not one of those. Thus, while Plantinga's version might succeed as a defence against the logical problem of evil, it will neither rebut the evidential problem of evil nor, without more, ground a successful theodicy that reconciles God's existence with the evil that occurs in this world.

In ‘Belief-In and Belief in God’ (Religious Studies, 28, 1992), J. N. Williams suggests that belief in God cannot be rational unless one has rational beliefs that God exists. While agreeing with his conclusion (though not with his statement of it), I disagree at almost every step with his method of arriving at it. In particular I suggest that Williams goes astray concerning the dual aspect of belief in, the nature of performatives, the arousal of belief states, and the correct account of belief in God.

Jerome Gellman has recently disputed my claim that a naturalistic explanation for mystical experiences is available, a better explanation than any current attempt to show that God is sometimes perceived in those experiences. Gellman argues (i) that some mystics do not ‘fit’ the sociological explanation of I. M. Lewis; (ii) that the sociological analysis of tribal mysticism cannot properly be extended to theistic experiences; and (iii) that mystical experiences merit prima facie credence, so the burden of proof falls on the naturalist. I reply (i) that the alleged counter-examples either do fit Lewis's explanation or are too poorly known to judge; (ii) that Lewis's theory, supplemented by recent neurophysiological findings, provides a strong explanation for all mystical experiences; and (iii) that the burden of proof, if there is one, now falls on the theist.

Many theists of a traditional bent have been bothered by the apparent tension between God's essential omnipotence and his essential moral goodness. Nelson Pike draws attention to the conflict between these two attributes in his article ‘Omnipotence and God's Ability to Sin’, and there have been many attempts to respond to it since that time. Most of these responses argue that the essential omnipotence and essential goodness of God are not logically incompatible, so that the traditional conception of God is not incoherent; I think the arguments have been largely successful. However, some theists have found the typical responses to Pike less than convincing, and are tempted to surrender the claim that God has moral perfection essentially in favour of the more modest claim that God is morally perfect in the actual world (and cannot gain or lose this perfection) though in some possible worlds God is morally defective. I argue in this paper that this fall-back position is incoherent. More accurately, I argue that a necessary being who is essentially omniscient and essentially omnipotent (a ‘NOO’ being) cannot be contingently morally perfect or contingently morally defective. Any such being is either essentially good or essentially evil. Since the latter alternative seems unattractive, I argue that theists should embrace the essential moral perfection of God.