The Epistemic Advantage of Lost Autographic Tokens of the Bible

I address an epistemic and related ontological dificulty with the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. The ontological problem: If biblical inerrancy applies to the original autographs, why would God allow these to disappear from the scene? The epistemological problem: Given that the original autographs are gone, we lack a way to know exactly what the original writings were. The first problem is solved by distinguishing text types and tokens, and claiming that semantic meaning and inerrancy are underivative features types. The second is resolved by claiming that in the actual world, we are epistemically better off with the original tokens gone.

On Maximal Simplicity

This essay engages with Oliver D. Crisp’s parsimonious model of divine simplicity while offering a defense of a maximal account of simplicity. Specifically, I clarify (1) the way in with Reformed orthodox theologians, like Gisbertus Voetius, anticipate something like Crisp’s model, (2) that pure actuality is an explication, rather than an entailment, of the doctrine of simplicity, and (3) that the doctrine of simplicity remains consistent with epistemic modesty in relation to theological matters.

The Need for Thisnesses

Richard Swinburne is an emergent dualist. One feature of his view is the need for a “thisness” or haecceity that makes each soul the soul that it is, distinct from other souls that may be indistinguishable from it in all qualitative respects. I argue that there is no need for thisnesses.

Platonism about Abstracta

I present a new argument to the effect that platonism about abstract entities (at least when combined with a specific understanding of the abstract / concrete distinction) undermines metaphysical naturalism and provides some support to theism. I further suggest that there are ways of extending this line of reasoning to point toward one or another more specific varieties of Christian theism.

Houston, Do We Have a Problem?

Would the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life (ETI) conflict in any way with Christian belief? We identify six areas of potential conflict. If there be no conflict in any of these areas—and we argue ultimately there is not—we are confident in declaring that there is no conflict, period. This conclusion underwrites the integrity of theological explorations into the existence of ETI, which has become a topic of increasing interest among theologians in recent years.

On Systematic Philosophical Theology

The disciplines of systematic theology, dogmatic theology, fundamental theology, philosophical theology, and philosophy of religion are characterized and their relations to one another are discussed.

Physicalism and the Incarnation

Trenton Merricks holds to a physicalist view of the Incarnation according to which the Son transformed into a physical object (the body of Jesus) at the Incarnation. R. T. Mullins, in “Physicalist Christology and the Two Sons Worry,” claims that Merricks’s account is Nestorian since it entails that it is metaphysically possible for the human nature of Christ to be a person independently of the Son’s incarnation. While I am not a physicalist, in this essay I defend Merricks’s view against Mullins’s claim. I argue that if the Son is numerically identical to the body of Jesus, then it is not possible for the body of Jesus to exist independently of the Son’s incarnation.

On William Rowe’s Evidential Arguments from Evil

William Rowe has put forward four popular evidential arguments from evil. I argue that there was already a prominent distinction between logical and evidential arguments from evil—the IN-IM-distinction, and that its adoption leads to two important results. First, all three non-Bayesian evidential arguments are actually not evidential but logical, while the Bayesian evidential argument genuinely evidential. Second, and most importantly, Rowe’s Bayesian evidential argument is redundant, in the sense that it has the same difficulties his three non-Bayesian arguments have. His move from the three earlier non-Bayesian arguments to the Bayesian argument is futile.