Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) was the outstanding Christian philosopher and theologian of the eleventh century. He is best known for the celebrated “ontological argument” for the existence of God in chapter two of the Proslogion, but his contributions to philosophical theology (and indeed to philosophy more generally) go well beyond the ontological argument. In what follows I examine Anselm's theistic proofs, his conception of the divine nature, and his account of human freedom, sin, and redemption.

Classical theism has long affirmed impassibility to be both a philosophically sound and scripturally warranted attribute of God. An affirmation of this attribute of divine apatheia is found in the works of theologians and philosophers of classical Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. However, over the last century, there has been a significant shift away from this tradition of divine impassibility. Divine impassibility has been challenged from many quarters, especially from Protestant Christianity, as a doctrine foreign to the scriptures of Abrahamic monotheism (...) and philosophically incompatible with a scriptural conception of God as personal, reactive, and relational. Many of the critics of divine impassibility suggest that there is a dilemma for these monotheists: that God may be impassible and yet unable to engage in personal, pathic, or relational ways with creation as the scriptures of the Judaism, Christianity, and Islam suggest, or that God may indeed express some pathos and reactivity but may no longer be understood to be impassible. In this work, I argue that this dilemma is a false one and that a third way, or via media, is possible. In support of the proposal I offer, I provide a critical analysis of impassibilist and passibilist arguments on historical, philosophical, and theological grounds. I demonstrate that strong affirmations of either position are indeed untenable, and in their places I propose a model of divine interaction based on an energetic kenoticism. In the via media offered below, I argue that we may yet retain a robust notion of divine impassibility in the essence or ousia of God, while allowing for a fuller account of divine pathos, reactivity, and interaction with creation via the kenotic and self-limiting divine energies. In this way, we may retain many of the classical commitments regarding the nature of God and yet provide more room to speak to these scriptural accounts of God’s interaction in the cosmos. (shrink)

The Participatory Model of Atonement offers an alternative view of Christian salvation, drawing on Pauline theology. It conceives of sin as a contagion which can usually be escaped only by dying. By ‘participating’ in Christ's death, the believer can escape its effects without having to die. This notion of ‘participation’ is obscure. I consider a possible way of clarifying it using metaphysical ideas taken from Jonathan Edwards. ‘Participation’ might involve becoming similar to Christ through the action of the Holy Spirit, (...) to such a degree that a person might be called identical with Christ. (shrink)

This article argues that deafness as disability from a medical view does not rest on the scientific aspect of medicine. Rather there are ideological biases and prejudices that are masked under the medical view of deafness as disability. The article reveals these and counters them.