Philosophical Essays against Open Theism – ch. 1: Stump

With this post I begin a series of responses to eleven essays in a book edited by Ben Arbour titled Philosophical Essays against Open Theism (Routledge, 2019). (As an aside, Ben was a friend, a good scholar, and a model Christian. In November of 2020 he and his wife Meg were both tragically killed by… Read More »

Against Personal Numerical Identity over Time

The topic of identity over time has long been a topic in philosophy. Frequently, these discussions take it for granted that, for understanding the persistence of persons at least, we need to have numerical identity over time. One motivating idea is that we commonly say, in reference to photos or memories of our younger selves,… Read More »

St. Athanasius as a Functional Open Theist

Since turning toward Eastern Orthodoxy about three years ago, I’ve become heavily interested in the history of Christianity and, in particular, the Church fathers, those influential individuals of, roughly, the first eight centuries AD who were instrumental in shaping what is now known as “orthodox” Christianity. One of those individuals was Athanasius of Alexandria (c.… Read More »

The Metaphysical Muddles of Molinism – Some Thoughts on MacGregor (Part 3)

This is my third and final post on Kirk MacGregor’s book, Molinist Philosophical and Theological Ventures (2022). My first post dealt with chapters 1–3. My second post dealt with chapter 4. This post covers chapters 5–6 and part of the concluding chapter. In Chapter 5 MacGregor defends Molinism’s Biblical credentials against various open theism friendly prooftexts.… Read More »

The Metaphysical Muddles of Molinism – Some Thoughts on MacGregor (Part 2)

This is a long-planned continuation of a previous post from several months ago in which I commented on chapters 1–3 of Kirk MacGregor’s book, Molinist Philosophical and Theological Ventures (2022). MacGregor is one of the most active contemporary defenders of Molinism, a fairly popular model of divine providence that aims to reconcile a meticulous model… Read More »

God as Passible and Impassible – A Defense of Qualified Divine Impassibility

As I remarked in my previous post, there are roughly two main views on divine impassibility. According to the “unqualified” view, which came to predominate in Western Christianity, God is absolutely impassible in the sense that He cannot be affected by creation in any way. Intrinsically considered, God is absolutely indifferent to creation. He remains exactly… Read More »

Two Varieties of Classical Theism

It is often insufficiently appreciated, I submit, that so-called “classical theism” is not a monolithic model of God. There are two main varieties: Unqualified classical theism (UCT) = God is absolutely simple, absolutely immutable, absolutely timeless, absolutely impassible, purely actual, etc. Qualified classical theism (QCT) = God is significantly simple, significantly immutable, significantly timeless, significantly impassible, etc.,… Read More »

Is Libertarian Free Will at Odds with Christian Orthodoxy?

Now that I’ve submitted the manuscript for my Open Theism book for the Cambridge Elements series, I’m finally able to return to blogging. I’m going to start by clearing some items off my spindle before eventually blogging on some new ideas that I’ve been mulling over. So, let’s begin. In the first half of David… Read More »