In October 1998 eminent Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff (Yale University, emeritus) delivered a lecture entitled “Tertullian’s Enduring Question”. The lecture was subsequently printed in a publication called The Cresset in 1999 and it is now available as chapter 13 in the first volume of Wolterstorff’s collected papers. In the lecture Wolterstorff reflects on Tertullian’s famous question… Read More »
This is the second installment in a series of posts in which I respond to a recent 2013 paper by William Lane Craig and David Hunt (hereafter, C&H). Entitled “Perils of the Open Road,” C&H critique two papers defending open theism: a 2006 paper that I co-wrote with Greg Boyd and Tom Belt entitled “Open… Read More »
With this post I begin a series in which I respond to a 2013 paper by William Lane Craig and David Hunt. Entitled “Perils of the Open Road,” the paper critiques two papers defending open theism. More specifically, they critique a 2006 paper that I co-wrote with Greg Boyd and Tom Belt entitled “Open Theism,… Read More »
This is the final installment in a three-part commentary on philosopher Lydia McGrew’s essay on divine timelessness published in the latest volume of The Christendom Review. In part 1 of this series, I critiqued three of her arguments in favor of divine timelessness. In part 2 I looked at her responses to two categories of… Read More »
This post is the second in a three-part commentary on philosopher Lydia McGrew’s essay on divine timelessness published in the latest volume of The Christendom Review. In part 1 of this series, I critique three of her arguments in favor of divine timelessness: arguments based on divine transcendence, immutability, and perfection. In part 3, I… Read More »
In the latest volume of The Christendom Review, philosopher Lydia McGrew presents a three-fold argument in favor of divine timelessness. This is the view that God is absolutely immutable (cannot change in any respects) and exists in a manner that is completely unqualified by temporal predicates. On this view God doesn’t have a history or… Read More »
In my previous post I briefly presented a reason, one having to do with the need to avoid fatalism and accommodate future contingency, for thinking that the future is alethically open, or such that there is no complete, true, linear story of the future. I then noted that we can make sense of alethic openness by supposing that… Read More »
By the alethic openness of the future I mean that there is no complete, true, linear story of the future. The main motivation for believing that the future is alethically open comes from future contingency. If the future is not alethically open but alethically settled, then there is a complete, true, linear story of the future. But,… Read More »
In 2008 I published a paper called “Generic Open Theism and Some Varieties Thereof” (Religious Studies). My stated goal in that paper was to “facilitate ongoing dialogue between open and non-open theists” by making precise what “minimal set of commitments any open theist, qua open theist, must affirm.” I thus advocated, and still advocate, for… Read More »
When most Christians speak of Biblical “inerrancy” they have in mind what could more accurately be called “strong” or “dogmatic” inerrancy. It is a kind of methodological stance, amounting to something like this: strong inerrancy (SI) = If something in the Bible looks implausible or mistaken, then either you haven’t understood it properly, you have… Read More »