In the past few years, the focus of arguments against theism has shifted. Where previously the existence of evil has been thought by many demonstrative of the impossibility of God's existence, now it is frequently purveyed as merely evidence against the existence of a Supreme Being. Even this more modest claim has been forcefully denied by William Alston and Peter van Inwagen. I argue that their arguments are not persuasive. Not only do they suffer logical flaws but, if accepted, actually have pernicious effects on the values of reasoning and religious practice.

In the philosophical world Anselm is known almost exclusively for the work in his two earliest writings, the Monologion and Proslogion, which, of course, includes his celebrated ontological argument for the existence of God. It is unfortunate that the rest of his work is not more widely known, for he makes some important contributions to western thought in later treatises that are virtually unknown to present-day philosophers and theologians. One such contribution is his concept of freedom, which he explains and defends primarily in De Libertate Arbitrii (hereafter DLA), written somewhere between 1085 and 1090. Anselm's concept of freedom is important for a number of reasons. First, he argues for a definition of freedom which is significantly different from others found in the history of western thought. Second, in his investigation of freedom he makes use of a methodological procedure which in certain respects has striking similarities (though there are also important differences) to certain analytic techniques well-known today. And finally, the single definition that Anselm provides is intended to include in its compass two major and seemingly different senses of ‘freedom’.

The doctrine of divine simplicity, the doctrine that God has no physical or metaphysical complexity whatsoever, is not a doctrine designed to induce immediate philosophical acquiescence. There are severe questions about its coherence. And even if those questions can be answered satisfactorily in favour of the doctrine, there remains the question why anyone should accept it. Thomas V. Morris raises both sorts of questions about a version of the doctrine which I have put forward. In the following pages I shall respond to what I take to be the most serious of Morris's objections. I shall argue that the doctrine survives Morris's onslaught, but that one observation of his points it in a direction I had hitherto not taken seriously. The bulk of Morris's paper raises questions of the first sort; perforce the bulk of my paper will also. I shall offer, at the end, a reason for thinking that neither of us is yet in a position to pronounce categorically on the second question. My remarks in this paper constitute an interim report on how I think things presently stand with divine simplicity.

The theism which I consider in this paper is one which affirms each of the three following propositions: ‘God exists’, ‘Omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection are all defining traits of God’ and ‘Evil exists in the world’. I will not be concerned at all with any variety of theism which might deny the truth of any of the foregoing propositions. Broadly put, my concern, therefore, is with orthodox, traditional theism.

Sometime after the famous fratricidal battle among the Bharatas known as the Mahābhārata war was over (on the eve of which the Bhagavadgītā had been revealed to Arjuna by Krŗşņa), Arjuna

requested Krŗşņa… to repeat the instruction which had already been conveyed to him on ‘the holy field of Kurukşetra’ but which had gone out of his ‘degenerate mind’. Kŗşņa thereupon protests that he is not equal to a verbatim recapitulation of the Bhagavadgītā but agrees in lieu of that to impart to Arjuna the same instruction in other words, through the medium of a certain ancient story – or purātana itihāsa. And the instruction thus conveyed constitutes what is called the Anugītā, a name which is in itself an embodiment of this anecdote.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the importance of what is sometimes called ‘the literary and dramatic character’ of Hume's Dialogues. This importance is such that not taking this specific character of the Dialogues into account leads to conclusions opposite to the ones Hume, in the special form he gave to his work, was trying to impart to his readers. I will offer my analysis in opposition to the one, voiced by, for instance D. W. Harward, in which ‘the apparent philosophical inconsistencies in the Dialogues are resolved without appeal to Hume's commitment to “literary or dramatic balance,” an appeal few of us find convincing or philosophically interesting’ (Harward, 1976, p. 138). The last part of Harward's statement is of course only of biographical interest; however, the attempt to offer an interpretation of Hume's Dialogues in which the literary character of the work is wilfully set aside, comes to missing a basic understanding for the man and the work. In what follows I will make this explicit by a number of points, each of which shows the importance of this literary and dramatic character of the Dialogues. In each case the result could not be reached without taking this special character into account.

Could a theory concerning the temporal structure of the universe have any implications for the possibility of a creator? A recent remark by Stephen Hawking suggests that it could. In A Brief History of Time, Hawking writes:

The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary … has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe… So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

Many writers (including professional philosophers) often generalise about mysticism without a sufficiently close analysis of texts. Consequently the generalisations are often invalid. My present aim is to analyse one text and, in the light of this analysis, to offer some observations concerning mysticism in general and Christian mysticism in particular.

In this paper I evaluate Brian Zamulinski's recent attempt to rebut an argument to the conclusion that having any kind of religious faith violates a moral duty. I agree with Zamulinski that the argument is unsound, but I disagree on where it goes wrong. I criticize Zamulinski's alternative construal of Christian faith as existential commitment to fundamental assumptions. It does not follow that we should accept the moral argument against religious faith, for at least two reasons. First, Zamulinski's Cliffordian ethics of belief is defective in several regards. Second, the truth of doxastic involuntarism and the possibility of doxastic excuse conditions can be used to demonstrate that the argument is unconvincing.

In presenting his theory of religious pluralism, John Hick discussed the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā, emptiness, which he regarded as functionally equivalent to his postulated noumenal Real. This article introduces Hick's pluralistic hypothesis and reviews the major criticisms of his theory. It then investigates Hick's understanding of śūnyatā, before arguing that a Madhyamaka interpretation of śūnyatā, within the context of the Buddhist theory of ‘two truths’, differs considerably from Hick's understanding. The article suggests that the Madhyamaka interpretation of śūnyatā can be used to reconfigure Hick's pluralistic hypothesis, thereby avoiding the major criticisms Hickian pluralism faces, for it provides a new way of thinking about the relation between ultimate reality and the reality that we experience.

In this article I assess the coherence of Jonathan Edwards's doctrine of divine simplicity as an instance of an actus purus account of perfect-being theology. Edwards's view is an idiosyncratic version of this doctrine. This is due to a number of factors including his idealism and the Trinitarian context from which he developed his notion of simplicity. These complicating factors lead to a number of serious problems for his account, particularly with respect to the opera extra sunt indivisa principle. I conclude that Edwards sets out an interesting and subtle version of the doctrine, but one which appears mired in difficulties from which he is unable to extract himself.

The Anglican Thirty Nine Articles join catholic Christendom in affirming that:

There is but one living and true God…and in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Dombrowski and Murdoch offer versions of the ontological argument which aim to avoid two types of objection – those concerned with the nature of the divine, and those concerned with the move from an abstract concept to a mind-independent reality. For both, the nature of the concept of God/Good entails its instantiation, and both supply a supporting argument from experience. It is only Murdoch who successfully negotiates the transition from an abstract concept to the instantiation of that concept, however, and this is achieved by means of an ontological argument from moral experience which, in a reversal of the Kantian doctrine, depends ultimately on a form of the cosmological argument.

In the course of presenting his celebrated ‘vale of soul-making’ theodicy, John Hick claims that in a world where all human suffering is either justly deserved divine punishment or imposed by God for the spiritual growth of the sufferer, people would lack opportunity to be involved in genuine acts of deep compassion. I argue that the relief of divinely imposed suffering can be a morally valuable and spiritually beneficial activity, and mention ideas from the Jewish tradition which suggest that it is right for people to ameliorate suffering even when that suffering constitutes a just punishment from God.

In this article I reply to Jon Robson's objections to my argument that God does not contain any possible worlds. I had argued that ugly possible worlds clearly compromise God's beauty. Robson argues that I failed to show that possible worlds can be subject to aesthetic evaluation, and that even if they were it could be the case that ugliness might contribute to God's overall beauty. In reply I try to show that possible worlds are aesthetically evaluable by arguing that possible worlds are maximally rich representations of possible events. I further argue that nothing in God's being can be aesthetically non-evaluable since God must be maximal beauty – a beauteous maximality which needs no ugliness. Finally I show in what sense Christ's heavenly scars can be beautiful.

‘Everyone agrees that the moral features of things supervene on their natural features’ (Smith (1994),22). Everyone is wrong, or so I will argue. In the first section, I explain the version of moral supervenience that Smith and others argue everyone should accept. In the second section, I argue that the mere conceptual possibility of a divine command theory of morality (DCT) is sufficient to refute the version of moral supervenience under consideration. Lastly, I consider and respond to two objections, showing, among other things, that while DCT is sufficient to refute this version of moral supervenience it is not necessary.

I show that if the ontological argument is sound, it proves that a number of maximally great beings must exist. I show that maximal greatness does not imply uniqueness, that such beings can be omnipotent and yet not restrict each other's power, and that each must have its own separate stream of consciousness. I also show that attempts to unify the beings by unifying the streams of consciousness leads to a form of pantheism.

In Wunder (2013) I observed a probabilistic blunder in Plantinga (2011) and argued that correcting it, while noting Plantinga's acceptance of logically non-contingent theism, had negative consequences for many other of his probabilistic claims. Professor Plantinga kindly replied to my correspondence, but the fruits of that conversation could not be incorporated into Wunder (2013). This article will explain the blunder and summarize my earlier arguments before addressing Plantinga's main replies. I conclude that these replies fail to circumvent most of the problems observed earlier: perhaps most significantly, the Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism and theism's logical non-contingency still appear jointly to imply theism's necessary falsehood.

Professor Roland Puccetti sets himself a double aim in his article ‘The Loving God—Some Observations on John Hick's Evil and the Love of God’ (Religious Studies, April 1967). His more modest aim is to demolish the Irenaean type of Christian theodicy presented in the book which he discusses. His more ambitious aim is to show that no theodicy of any kind is possible because ‘theodicy in general is a subject without a proper object’ (p. 255). His intention is thus ‘not only to carry the battle but also the campaign’ (p. 255); and at the end he is evidently satisfied that he has done this. But I think it can be shown that his satisfaction is at least premature. He has not achieved even his more limited aim, still less his more comprehensive one. For in his critique he altogether omits from consideration an essential part of the argument which he is attacking. Whereas in the first ten sections of his articlehe gives accurate summaries of the relevant aspects of the view which he is criticising, in section eleven on the ‘appeal to mystery’ his summary is misleadingly inadequate. He simply ignores a crucial aspect of the theodicy he is trying to demolish; and the purpose of the present article is to repair that omission.

Modern analytic philosophy of religion has become increasingly interested in the dogmatic substances of Christian theology. I argue that the doctrine of the Trinity provides an instance of the importance of dogmatic formulation for an appreciation of the philosophical aspect of the Christian concept of God. The starting point of mydiscussion is the recent defence of pantheism by Michael Levine, and his discussion of Neoplatonist and German Idealist models of deity. Both metaphysical theism and the alleged Neoplatonic metaphysical genealogy of pantheism are considered with particular reference to St Augustine's account of creation in the Confessions. Just as it is impossible to distinguish the purely philosophical from the purely dogmatic concept of God, one cannot give an adequate modern account of theism without a rigorous and sensitive treatment of the historical models. The issue of pantheism shows how a misunderstanding of the meaning of concept of ‘unity’ can distort our view of theism as a model of deity.