How many and why? A question for Graham Oppy that classical theism can answer

I argue that classical theism has a significant advantage as a theory of the First Cause over Graham Oppy's naturalistic account. This is because classical theism not only gives us a clear answer to the question of how many first causes there are but also because it explains why there is that number and not another. In comparison, Oppy's ‘initial physical state’ account seemingly leaves these questions hopelessly open, and so does his ‘metaphysical simples’ proposal for a foundational layer of reality. I end by exploring two arguments from omnipotence and perfection that could be of use also to non-classical theists.

Amen to daat: on the foundations of Jewish epistemology

I argue that the Hebrew Bible adopts a non-doxastic account of propositional faith. In coming to this conclusion, we shall discover that Biblical Hebrew has no word for belief. What ramifications might this have had for biblical and Jewish epistemology? I begin to trace the sort of epistemic norms that might emerge from an epistemology that approaches knowledge by thinking about faith, rather than belief.

The Aloneness Argument fails

Schmid and Mullins present what they call ‘the Aloneness Argument’ for the inconsistency of four theses from classical theism: the doctrine of divine simplicity, the doctrine of divine omniscience, the claim that God is free to create or not to create, and the claim that it is possible that God and nothing but God exist. We deny that they have shown an inconsistency between these theses. We maintain that, depending on how certain premises are interpreted, one or another premise is false. We also offer a positive proposal regarding a simple God's knowledge that he is alone in a world where he doesn't create anything.

Probing the mind of God: divine beliefs and credences

Although much has been written about divine knowledge, and some on divine beliefs, virtually nothing has been written about divine credences. In this article we comparatively assess four views on divine credences: (1) God has only beliefs, not credences; (2) God has both beliefs and credences; (3) God has only credences, not beliefs; and (4) God has neither credences nor beliefs, only knowledge. We weigh the costs and benefits of these four views and draw connections to current discussions in philosophical theology.

The transformative power of accepting God's love

This article develops an account of some of the central features involved on the human side in adopting a richly accepting orientation towards God's love. It then builds a conceptual and empirical argument for the conclusion that accepting God's love can enhance a person's mental health and can indirectly enable a person to cultivate or maintain moral virtues – whether or not God exists. Importantly, the article contends that these transformative benefits are available to both believers and agnostics, and an original secondary data analysis is offered to support this conclusion in the case of agnostics. The article explains how this transformative value of accepting God's love may serve as the basis for a novel pragmatic argument for theistic religious commitment.

Human dominion and wild animal suffering

It may be possible, now or in the future, for humans to technologically intervene to reduce the amount of suffering experienced by wild animals. There is a debate about whether, if humans can do this, they should. Here, I consider the implications for this debate of the theological claim that humans have been granted dominion over the other animals. I argue that it's more plausible to interpret the dominion claim as granting humans (i) the responsibility to care for the well-being of individual animals than to interpret it as giving humans either (ii) the right to do whatever they want to other animals or (iii) the responsibility to care only for the well-being of aggregates of animals (such as whole species). I then show how this understanding of dominion undermines a range of arguments against intervening to reduce wild animal suffering. These arguments claim that humans do not stand in the right sort of relationship for intervention to be obligatory (or perhaps even permissible). But if we possess such dominion, we do stand in the right sort of relationship for it to be obligatory.