It is widely agreed among broadly Anselmian theists that God is in some sense the 'delimiter of possibilities.' In other words, the scope of possibility is explained by the manner in which the universe emanates from God. However, existing accounts of God's role here—in terms of freedom, choice, or power—face serious difficulties. The present paper provides a new account of God's role as the delimiter of possibilities in terms of the different manner in which the non-actuality of non-actual states of (...) affairs is explained. Intuitively and metaphorically, we can think of the menu of states of affairs being 'whittled down' in successive stages of a process of divine decision-making, with the different species of impossibility corresponding to when and how the states of affairs are ruled out. I argue that this approach provides genuine contingency while also preserving the Principle of Sufficient Reason. (shrink)

This volume announces a new era in the philosophy of God. Many of its contributions work to create stronger links between the philosophy of God, on the one hand, and mathematics or metamathematics, on the other hand. It is about not only the possibilities of applying mathematics or metamathematics to questions about God, but also the reverse question: Does the philosophy of God have anything to offer mathematics or metamathematics? The remaining contributions tackle stereotypes in the philosophy of religion. The (...) volume includes 35 contributions. It is divided into nine parts: 1. Who Created the Concept of God; 2. Omniscience, Omnipotence, Timelessness and Spacelessness of God; 3. God and Perfect Goodness, Perfect Beauty, Perfect Freedom; 4. God, Fundamentality and Creation of All Else; 5. Simplicity and Ineffability of God; 6. God, Necessity and Abstract Objects; 7. God, Infinity, and Pascal's Wager; 8. God and (Meta-)Mathematics; and 9. God and Mind. (shrink)

Consider the regularity thesis that each possible event has non-zero probability. Hájek challenges this in two ways: there can be nonmeasurable events that have no probability at all and on a large enough sample space, some probabilities will have to be zero. But arguments for the existence of nonmeasurable events depend on the axiom of choice. We shall show that the existence of anything like regular probabilities is by itself enough to imply a weak version of AC sufficient to prove (...) the Banach–Tarski Paradox on the decomposition of a ball into two equally sized balls, and hence to show the existence of nonmeasurable events. This provides a powerful argument against unrestricted orthodox Bayesianism that works even without AC. A corollary of our formal result is that if every partial order extends to a total preorder while maintaining strict comparisons, then the Banach–Tarski Paradox holds. This yields an argument that incommensurability cannot be avoided in ambitious versions of decision theory. (shrink)

Edward Feser defends the ‘Neo-Platonic proof ’ for the existence of the God of classical theism. After articulating the argument and a number of preliminaries, I first argue that premise three of Feser’s argument—the causal principle that every composite object requires a sustaining efficient cause to combine its parts—is both unjustified and dialectically ill-situated. I then argue that the Neo-Platonic proof fails to deliver the mindedness of the absolutely simple being and instead militates against its mindedness. Finally, I uncover two (...) tensions between Trinitarianism and the Neo-Platonic proof. (shrink)

Surely God, as a perfectly rational being, created the universe for some _reason_. But is God’s creating the universe for a reason compatible with divine impassibility? That is the question I investigate in this article. The _prima facie_ tension between impassibility and God’s creating for a reason arises from impassibility’s commitment to God being uninfluenced by anything _ad extra_. If God is uninfluenced in this way, asks the detractor, how could he be moved to create anything at all? This _prima (...) facie_ tension has recently been formalized and dubbed the ‘Problem of Arbitrary Creation’. In this article, I defend a new extension of this problem. I begin by characterizing classical theism, divine simplicity, and divine impassibility. I then spell out the Problem of Arbitrary Creation as developed by R. T. Mullins. I next raise a worry for Mullins’ version of the argument. Finally, I extend the argument and show how my extension avoids the aforementioned worry. (shrink)

In the exceptional book _Divine Holiness and Divine Action_, Mark Murphy defends what he calls the _holiness framework _for divine action. The purpose of our essay-response to Murphy’s book is to consider an alternative framework for divine action, what we call the _agapist framework_. We argue that the latter framework is more probable than Murphy’s holiness framework with respect to_ select _theological desiderata.

Some analytic philosophers of religion argue that theists should embrace the hypothesis of the multiverse to address the problem of evil and make the concept of a “best possible creation” plausible. I discuss what classical theists, such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, might make of the multiverse hypothesis including issues such as: the principle of plenitude, what a classical theist multiverse could look like, and how a classical theist multiverse could deal with the problem of evil and the question of (...) a best possible creation. (shrink)

The Epicureans are hedonists who believe that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. Since pleasure is the only intrinsic good, other things are only worthwhile for the sake of pleasure. Tranquility is the final Epicurean telos, i.e., all of our actions should aim for freedom from bodily and mental pain. According to the Epicureans, tranquility is the limit of the magnitude of pleasures so that there is no pleasure beyond tranquility. Once we free ourselves from all pain, there are no (...) further pleasures to pursue. This poses the following problem. Since hedonism is true and something is only worthwhile for the sake of pleasure, but there are no further pleasures for those who have achieved tranquility to pursue, then it seems that nothing is worthwhile to the tranquil. This poses a problem for Epicureans because they should reject this consequence and they seem to want to do so, but they cannot without contradicting themselves about the nature and limit of pleasure. I call this the Nothing is Worthwhile to the Tranquil Problem. This paper develops a strategy that Epicureans can adopt to solve NWP. I develop this strategy in three stages. First, I explain NWP: Epicurean claims about the limit and nature of pleasure suggest that nothing can be worthwhile to the tranquil. Second, I show that this problem is analogous to the Problem of Creation, which claims that an impassible God has no reasons to create. Third, I argue that a prominent solution to PoC can also solve NWP. That solution goes as follows. Some activities are worthwhile to the tranquil because these activities express tranquility, just as creating is worthwhile to God because it expresses God’s perfections. In the final section, I raise three objections to this solution. None of them is strong enough to defeat the solution for which I argue, and so I conclude that it merits consideration as a solution to NWP. (shrink)

According to Michael Almeida, reflections on free will and possibility can be used to show that the existence of an Anselmian God is compatible with the existence of evil. These arguments depend on the assumption that an agent can be free with respect to an action only if it is possible that that agent performs that action. Although this principle enjoys some intuitive support, I argue that Anselmianism undermines these intuitions by introducing impossible options. If Anselmianism is true, I argue, (...) then both God and creatures may be free to do the impossible. (shrink)

Can I be free to perform an action if God has decided to ensure that I do not choose that action? I show that Molinists and simple foreknowledge theorists are committed to answering in the affirmative. This is problematic for their status as theological incompatibilists. I suggest that strategies for preserving their theological incompatibilism in light of this result should be based on sourcehood. However, the path is not easy here either, since Leibniz has shown how theological determinists can offer (...) an extremely robust form of sourcehood. Proponents of these views must identify a valuable form of sourcehood their theories allow that Leibniz’s theory doesn’t. (shrink)

In recent years the doctrine of divine simplicity has become a topic of interest in the philosophical theological community. In particular, the modal collapse argument against divine simplicity has garnered various responses from proponents of divine simplicity. Some even claiming that the modal collapse argument is invalid. It is our contention that these responses have either misunderstood or misstated the argument, and have thus missed the force of the objection. Our main aim is to clarify what the modal collapse argument (...) in fact says, and explain why the recent responses do not succeed. In order to argue our case, we will proceed in several steps. First, we aim to systematically articulate the doctrine of divine simplicity. Second, articulate the Christian conviction that God is free to create any feasible world or no world at all. Third, argue that divine simplicity suffers a modal collapse and thus undermines God's freedom. Fourth, respond to potential objections to modal collapse. Fifth, we offer some concluding remarks. (shrink)

Chris Tweedt has offered a solution to the “common sense problem of evil,” on which that there is gratuitous evil is justified non-inferentially as a trivial inference from non-inferentially justified premises by invoking versions of CORNEA. Tweedt claims his solution applies not only to the versions of the common sense problem of evil offered by Paul Draper and Trent Dougherty, but also to that offered by me in this journal in 1992. Here I argue that Tweedt fails to defeat this (...) version of the problem. So even if Tweedt’s response to Draper and Dougherty is successful, a version of the common sense problem of evil survives. (shrink)

Rationalist models of divine agency typically ascribe perfect freedom to God, where this is understood as a freedom from external causal influences and non-rational influences, including desires or preferences not derived from reason alone. Paul Draper has recently developed a rationalist model of God’s agency on which God faces “hard choices” between options differing in moral and non-moral value. He argues that this model is preferable to rival rationalist models because it is compatible with God’s having significant freedom and being (...) maximally worthy of praise and gratitude. I argue that on an alternative model of divine agency, which rejects perfect freedom and holds that God makes hard choices on the basis of brute preferences, God would be more worthy of praise and gratitude. However, a probabilistic problem for theism which Draper identifies for his model also applies to the brute preference model. (shrink)

Erik Wielenberg [2014] and Mark Murphy [2017], [2018] have defended a series of arguments for the conclusion that creatures are not good intrinsically. In response, I take two steps. First, I introduce a conception of intrinsic value that makes created intrinsic value unproblematic. Second, I respond to their arguments in turn. The first argument is from the sovereignty-aseity intuition and an analysis of intrinsicality that makes derivative good extrinsic. I challenge the analysis. The second comes from a conception of perfection (...) where God exhausts all possibilities for goodness. I challenge this conception. The third comes from the contingency of creation and the internal logic of intrinsic value. I challenge the assumption that connects the two. I then present an argument from reference magnetism that the only conception of God, God's perfections, and religious language that makes it plausible that the sentence "God is intrinsically good and creatures are not" is true involves a strongly univocalist position. A view that is either unstatable or places strong demands on our conception of God, God's perfections and religious language thereby loses plausibility. (shrink)

“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. Which sort is the free will sort is what all the fuss is about. (And what a fuss it has been: philosophers have debated this question for over two millenia, and just about every major philosopher has had something to say about it.) Most philosophers suppose that the concept of free will is very (...) closely connected to the concept of moral responsibility. Acting with free will, on such views, is just to satisfy the metaphysical requirement on being responsible for one's action. (Clearly, there will also be epistemic conditions on responsibility as well, such as being aware—or failing that, being culpably unaware—of relevant alternatives to one's action and of the alternatives' moral significance.) But the significance of free will is not exhausted by its connection to moral responsibility. Free will also appears to be a condition on desert for one's accomplishments (why sustained effort and creative work are praiseworthy); on the autonomy and dignity of persons; and on the value we accord to love and friendship. (See Kane 1996, 81ff. and Clarke 2003, Ch.1.). (shrink)