This blog post is the first in a series on a recent book by James D. Gifford, Jr. titled The Hexagon of Heresy: A Historical and Theological Study of Definitional Divine Simplicity (Wipf & Stock, 2022). I have several reasons for interest in this book. First, its discussion of “definitional divine simplicity” (DDS), which modern philosophers… Read More »
This is eleventh and final post in an eleven-part series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 11 by Keith Wyma, “Jesus Didn’t Die for Your Sins: Open Theism, Atonement, and the Pastoral Problem of Evil” (pp. 178–202). In this… Read More »
After a several month blogging hiatus, I’m resuming my eleven-part series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 10 by Ken Perszyk, “Open Theism and the Soteriological Problem of Evil” (pp. 159–177). In this essay Perszyk compares and contrasts Open… Read More »
There’s a theoretical way for God to exercise quasi-meticulous providence (if He wants to) while respecting creaturely freedom and doing so without either having middle knowledge or exhaustive definite foreknowledge. In short, you can get (nearly) all the advantages of Molinism without the internal incoherence and metaphysical baggage. This is not to say that the… Read More »
Suppose we assume that God exists, God is omniscient (i.e., God infallibly knows all of reality as it is), The future is causally open (i.e., there are multiple causally possible futures because some future event possibilities are causally undetermined). Now, suppose a sequence S of events (E1, E2, … , En) plays out a certain… Read More »
This is part nine of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 9 by Greg Welty, “Open Theism, Risk-Taking, and the Problem of Evil” (pp. 140–158). Welty’s argument, roughly, is that open theism enjoys virtually no… Read More »
This is part eight of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 8 by James N. Anderson, “‘May It Have Happened, Lord!’: Open Theism and Past-Directed Prayers” (pp. 121–139). This is one of the more interesting… Read More »
This is part six of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 6 by Katherin Rogers, “Foreknowledge, Freedom, and Vicious Circles: Anselm vs. Open Theism” (pp. 93–109). Rogers is a well-respected philosopher of religion and a… Read More »
This is part five of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 5 by Paul Helm, “The ‘Openness’ in Compatibilism” (pp. 80–92). Helm is a well-respected philosopher of religion and a long-time staunch defender of theistic… Read More »
This is part four of eleven in a series responding to the essays in Ben Arbour’s edited volume, Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). In this post I tackle chapter 4 by David Alexander, “Open Theism and Origins Essentialism: A New Argument Against Open Theism” (pp. 71–79). In this essay, Alexander argues for a… Read More »