This book, one of the first full-length studies of the modalities to emerge from the debate to which Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Ruth Marcus, and others are contributing, is an exploration and defense of the notion of modality de re, the idea that objects have both essential and accidental properties. Plantinga develops his argument by means of the notion of possible worlds and ranges over such key problems as the nature of essence, transworld identity, negative existential propositions, and the existence (...) of unactual objects in other possible worlds. He also applies his logical theories to the elucidation of two problems in the philosophy of religion: the problem of evil and the ontological argument. (shrink)

There has been in recent years a plethora of defenses of theism from analytical philosophers such as Plantinga, Swinburne, and Alston. Richard Gale's important book is a critical response to these writings. New versions of cosmological, ontological, and religious experience arguments are critically evaluated, along with pragmatic arguments to justify faith on the grounds of its prudential or moral benefits. A special feature of the book is the discussion of the atheological argument that attempts to deduce a contradiction from the (...) theist's way of conceiving of God's nature. In considering arguments for and against the existence of God, Gale is able to clarify many important philosophical concepts including exploration, time, free will, personhood, actuality, and the objectivity of experience. (shrink)

What sorts of things are there in the world? Clearly enough, there are concrete, material things; but are there other things too, perhaps nonconcrete or non-material things? Some people believe that there are such things, which are often called abstract ; purported examples of such objects include numbers, properties, possible but non-actual states of affairs, propositions, and sets. Following a long-standing tradition, I shall describe persons who believe that there are abstract objects as ‘platonists’. In this paper, I shall not (...) directly address the plausibility of platonism, as compared with its rivals; instead, I shall confine my attention to one way in which some people have tried to combine platonism and theism. More specifically, I shall concentrate upon the claim that abstract objects depend upon God ontologically ; I shall argue that platonistic theists should reject DEP in favour of the claim that abstract objects exist independently of God . In order to evaluate the relative merits of DEP versus IND, it will be helpful to examine in some detail a particular articulation of DEP. When it comes to recent work on DEP, we can do no better in this regard than to examine the recent work of Thomas V. Morris and Christopher H. Menzel. According Morris and Menzel, there is a sense in which God literally creates such abstracta through engaging in intellective activities. (shrink)

God is conceived in the Western theistic tradition to be both the Creator and Conservor of the universe. These two roles were typically classed as different aspects of creation, originating creation and continuing creation. On pain of incoherence, however, conservation needs to be distinguished from creation. Contrary to current analyses (such as Philip Quinn's), creation should be explicated in terms of God's bringing something into being, while conservation should be understood in terms of God's preservation of something over an interval (...) of time. The crucial difference is that while conservation presupposes an object of the divine action, creation does not. Such a construal has significant implications for a tensed theory of time. (shrink)

Certainly NBPW can justify metaphysical evil, which is all Leibniz intended it to do. Probably, as suggested by Bruce Reichenbach, NBPW can rebut an atheistic argument from the non-existence of the best possible world. It could even augment a GGD by defending against a divine obligation to have created a “larger” world. But NBPW by itself cannot serve to derail the logical problem of evil in any way whatsoever; theists must find refuge in a GGD if they are to find (...) it at all. Lacking a GGD, NBPW is irrelevant; given a GGD, NBPW is superfluous. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne presents a substantially rewritten and updated edition of his most celebrated book. No other work has made a more powerful case for the probability of the existence of God. Swinburne gives a rigorous and penetrating analysis of the most important arguments for theism: the cosmological argument; arguments from the existence of laws of nature and the 'fine-tuning' of the universe; from the occurrence of consciousness and moral awareness; and from miracles and religious experience. He claims that while none (...) of these arguments are deductively valid, they do give inductive support to theism and that, even when the argument from evil is weighed against them, taken together they offer good grounds to support the probability that there is a God. The overall structure of the discussion and its conclusion have been retained for this new edition, but much has been changed in order to strengthen the argumentation and to take account of Swinburne's subsequent work on the nature of consciousness and the problem of evil, and of the latest philosophical and scientific writing, especially in respect of the laws of nature and the argument from fine-tuning. This is now the definitive version of a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

According to the Doctrine of Divine Conservation, the world could not endure through time were God not actively sustaining its existence. An alternative to the conservationist view is one according to which the existence of whatever is the fundamental material of our universe is characterized by inertia, so that its continuance stands in no need of active causal intervention by some other being. In this article I develop in some detail the Doctrine of Existential Inertia and reply to some of (...) the objections brought against it by conservationists. (shrink)

Christian theists have always been concerned with the relationship between God’s providential control and human freedom. Flint’s book is an explication and defense of what he sees as the best way for orthodox Christians to conceive of this relationship: the Molinist account.

After an exposition of some key concepts in scholastic ontology, this paper examines four arguments presented by Francisco Suarez for the thesis, commonly held by Christian Aristotelians, that God's causal contribution to effects occurring in the ordinary course of nature goes beyond His merely conserving created substances along with their active and passive causal powers. The postulation of a further causal contribution, known as God's general concurrence (or general concourse), can be viewed as an attempt to accommodate an element of (...) truth present in occasionalist accounts of divine causality. (shrink)

This is the third volume in Alvin Plantinga's trilogy on the notion of warrant, which he defines as that which distinguishes knowledge from true belief. In this volume, Plantinga examines warrant's role in theistic belief, tackling the questions of whether it is rational, reasonable, justifiable, and warranted to accept Christian belief and whether there is something epistemically unacceptable in doing so. He contends that Christian beliefs are warranted to the extent that they are formed by properly functioning cognitive faculties, thus, (...) insofar as they are warranted, Christian beliefs are knowledge if they are true. (shrink)

On what basis does God choose a possible world to make actual? Theists typically claim that God freely selects exactly one world on the basis of its axiological characteristics. But suppose that there are infinitely many unsurpassable worlds from which to choose; or else that there are no unsurpassable worlds, but instead an infinite hierarchy of increasingly better worlds. On each of these scenarios, philosophers have alleged that God is unable rationally to choose a world for actualization. In the former (...) case, God lacks sufficient reason to select any particular world, since there are infinitely many other equally good candidates. In the latter case, God lacks sufficient reason to select any particular world, since for any world there are infinitely many better candidates. These considerations generate arguments for atheism, as follows. On theism, God is supposed to be the explanation for this world ’s being actual, and God requires sufficient reasons for action. So on either scenario or, since there is an actual world, and since God could not have had a sufficient reason for selecting it, this world was not actualized by God. In response, defenders of theism have urged that God need not have sufficient reason for choosing a world on or : God may defensibly choose a world at random. In what follows, I evaluate this reply. I conclude that it succeeds only on the enormously implausible assumption that there is exactly one randomizer available to God. (shrink)

God, who is an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent Creator and Providence, exists and There is evil are logically compatible claims. God exists, If God exists, then He has a morally sufficient reason for allowing any evil that He does allow , and There is evil is a consistent triad of propositions. Thus any pair from that triad is also consistent. Thus God exists and There is evil are logically compatible. But this does not settle the question as to whether the (...) truth of There is evil in the world has such consequences for theism as making it highly improbable that God exists or making it unreasonable to believe that God exists . That propositions P and Q are logically compatible does not entail that one does not provide powerful evidence against the other. In particular, it has seemed that some actual evils are gratuitous or in some manner just could not fit into a God-made world. Thus the simple argument is offered that: There are gratuitous evils; If there are gratuitous evils, then there is no God; so: There is no God. I will call this simple argument the ‘root argument’, for it is this argument and sophistications of it that will occupy us hereafter. (shrink)

I present a novel argument for the position that a morally unsurpassable God must create the best world that He has the power to create. I show that grace-based considerations of the sort proposed by Robert Adams neither refute my argument nor establish that a morally unsurpassable God need not create the best. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of my argument for the ‘no-best-world’ response to the problem of evil. (Published Online February 17 2004).

Rowe argues that if for every good world there is a better, then God is not morally perfect since no matter what world God were to create he could have done better than he did. I contend that Rowe’s argument doesn’t do justice to the role grace plays in the theist’s doctrine of creation, and respond to five new criticisms of my position that Rowe offers in Can God be Free?

Rowe argues that if for every good world there is a better, then God is not morally perfect since no matter what world God were to create he could have done better than he did. I contend that Rowe’s argument doesn’t do justice to the role grace plays in the theist’s doctrine of creation, and respond to five new criticisms of my position that Rowe offers in Can God be Free?

In this paper I defend the Anselmian conception of God as a necessary being who is necessarily omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good against arguments that attempt to show that we have good reason to think there are evil possible worlds in which either God does not exist or in which He lacks at least one of these attributes. I argue that the critics of Anselmianism have failed to provide any compelling reason to think such worlds are possible. The best the (...) critic of Anselmianism can achieve is a stand-off of competing modal intuitions. I conclude by suggesting some ways of resolving such a stand-off in favor of the Anselmian view. (shrink)

Robert Merrihew Adams argues that it is permissible for a perfectly good moral agent to create a world less good than the best one she could create. He argues that God would exhibit the important virtue of grace in creating less than the best and that this virtue is incompatible with the merit considerations required by the standard of creating the best. In this paper I give three arguments for the compatibility of merit consideration and graciousness of God toward creation. (...) I conclude that grace would not release a perfect agent from responsibility to create the best. (shrink)

Philosophers continue to debate about David Hume’s case against the rationality of belief in miracles. This article clarifies semantic, epistemological, and metaphysical questions addressed in the controversy. It also explains the main premises of Hume’s argument and discusses criticisms of them. The article concludes that one’s evaluation of Hume’s argument will depend on one’s views about (a) the definitions of ’miracle’ and ’natural law’; (b) the type of reasoning one ought to employ to determine the probability that a particular miracle (...) claim is true; and (c) whether reasonable people proportion their beliefs about the occurrence of miracles to their evidence. (shrink)

A question that has been largely overlooked by philosophers of religion is how God would be able to effect a rational choice between two worlds of unsurpassable goodness. To answer this question, I draw a parallel with the paradigm cases of indifferent choice, including Buridan's ass, and argue that such cases can be satisfactorily resolved provided that the protagonists employ what Otto Neurath calls an ‘auxiliary motive’. I supply rational grounds for the employment of such a motive, and then argue (...) against the views of Leibniz and Nicholas Rescher to show that this solution would also work for God. (shrink)

The concept of the best of all possible worlds is widely considered to be incoherent on the grounds that, for any world that might be termed the best, there is always another that is better. I note that underlying this argument is a conviction that the goodness of a world is determined by a single kind of good, the most plausible candidates for which are not maximizable. Against this I suggest that several goods may have to combine to determine the (...) goodness of a world, and because of logical conflicts between them, the goods can be optimized to give a genuine best of all possible worlds. (shrink)

I argue that George Schlesinger's proposed solution to the problem of evil fails because: (1) the degree of desirability of state of a being is not properly regarded as a trade‐off between happiness on the one hand and potential on the other; (2) degree of desirability of state is not capable of infinite increase; (3) there is no hierarchy of possible beings, but at most an ordering of such beings in terms of preferences; (4) the idea of such a hierarchy (...) is anyway morally repulsive. Schlesinger is right that the problem of evil disappears, but what makes it vanish is a recognition of the limits of our concepts of satisfaction and happiness, not the incoherent claim that satisfaction or happiness is capable of unlimited increase. (shrink)

Can God Be Free? is a penetrating study of a central problem in philosophy of religion: can it be right to regard God as free, and as praiseworthy for being perfectly good? Allowing that he has perfect knowledge and perfect goodness, if there is a best world for God to create he would have no choice other than to create it. But if God could not do otherwise than create the best world, he created the world of necessity, not freely, (...) and we have no reason to be thankful to God for creating us, since he couldn't do otherwise. William Rowe proposes the need for some substantial revision in contemporary thinking about the nature of God. (shrink)

This book presents twenty essays by philosopher Nicholas Rescher, representing more than a decade of his work.

I argue that the atheological claim that the existence of pain and suffering either contradicts or makes improbable God's existence or his possession of certain critical properties cannot be sustained. The construction of a theodicy for both moral and natural evils is the focus of the central part of the book. In the final chapters I analyze the concept of the best possible world and the properties of goodness and omnipotence insofar as they are predicated of God.

This paper examines the principle of creation ex nihilo as formulated by St. Augustine and contrasts it with the common-sense principle that “something cannot come from nothing.” It is argued that these two principles, if suitably interpreted, are logically consistent and a creation scenario is described in which their compatibility is demonstrated.

In this paper we evaluate two sets of theistic arguments against the traditional position that Cod created with absolute freedom. The first set features several variations of Leibniz’s basic proof that Cod must create the best possible world. The arguments in the second set base the claim that Cod must create on the Platonic or Dionysian principle that goodness is essentially self-diffusive. We argue that neither the Leibnizian nor the Dionysian arguments are successful.

In this paper I seek to show how God's freedom is not reduced or His power diminished by His inability to be less than perfectly good even though ours would be. That ours would be explains why it might prima facie appear to us that there is a ‘conceptual tension’ between some of the claims of traditional theism and reveals some interesting (well, to me anyway) differences between human freedom and divine freedom.

This paper has been superseded by chapter 3 of my book "God, the Best, and Evil" (OUP 2008). The chapter concerns God's choices in cases in which God has infinitely many better and better options.

The paper reaches two main conclusions: Firstly, even if there are one or more possible worlds than which there are none better, God cannot actualise any of them. Secondly, if there are possible worlds which God can actualise, and than which God can actualise none better, then God must actualise one of them. The paper is neutral between compatibilist and libertarian views of creaturely freedom. The paper's main ideas have been used, with modifications, in my book "God, the Best, and (...) Evil" (OUP 2008). (shrink)

In the central chapter of Can God Be Free?, William Rowe offers what amounts to an a priori argument for atheism. In what follows, I first clarify this argument, and I then defend it against recent criticisms due to William Hasker. Next, however, I outline four ways in which theists might plausibly reply to Rowe’s argument.

This chapter contains sections titled: Background The Problem of No Best World Theistic Responses: Four Categories Works cited.

This is a reply to William Rowe, "The Problem of No Best World," Faith and Philosophy (1994).