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 »
This is part three 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 3 by Ben Arbour, “A Few Worries About the Systematic Metaphysics of Open Future Open Theism.” Unlike the previous chapter by Visser, this is… Read More »
This is part two 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 2 by Sandra Visser, “God’s Knowledge of an Unreal Future.” Despite her not being an open theist, her essay is overall very congenial toward… Read More »
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 »
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 »
This is a reply to a recent critique of open theism by philosopher David Hunt on a YouTube channel called The Analytic Christian. The video interview was mainly focused on an essay Hunt wrote titled “What Does God Know? The Problems of Open Theism”. It was published in 2009 as part of an edited collection,… Read More »
Author analogies for different models of providence (somewhat tongue-in-cheek): Theistic Determinism: God as sole author – God writes the whole story without any outside input. He writes only for His own enjoyment, which He calls “glory” for some reason. Creatures are merely characters in the novel. Molinism: God as sole author, but with outside “inspiration”… Read More »
For Christian open theists it is an inconvenient fact of history that the view seems to have been a small minority report until fairly recently. This fact is the basis for one of the most commonly leveled objections against open theism, namely, that it is “too novel”. If open theism is true and supported by… Read More »
There are two sides to the problem of evil: God’s responsibility for evil God’s response to evil. (1) is retrospective; it has to do with God’s complicity in past occurrences of evil. (2) is prospective; it has to do with God’s ability to respond to evil moving forward—to eliminate evil, to bring good out of… Read More »
This is the fifth installment in a series of posts responding to a 2013 paper by William Lane Craig and David Hunt (hereafter, C&H) entitled “Perils of the Open Road”. In the paper C&H critique two papers defending open theism: a 2006 paper (hereafter, RBB) that I co-wrote with Greg Boyd and Tom Belt entitled “Open Theism, Omniscience, and… Read More »