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This book exposes and defends crucial items in the theological world-view of Christianity from the perspective of Christian philosophy. The topics considered include the nature of religious unbelief, the existence of God, the nature of God, religious faith, creation, revelation, Christology, redemption, scripture, and the beatific vision. The book revolves around questions like: Why believe in God? What is God like? Who was Jesus Christ? What is incarnation? How are humans redeemed? How should theology be done?

This book presents a detailed study of the theological concept (divine mediation) that was central to the Christological controversy of the early 4th century. The subject of this study is the access to God provided through the divine Word, as seen in the theologies of Eusebius of Caesarea, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Athanasius of Alexandria during the early years of the ‘Arian’ controversy. By analysing the views of three participants at the Council of Nicaea (325), this book demonstrates the variety of perspectives in a way that questions popular approaches to the period that see the controversy as having only two sides. This analysis constitutes a new approach to the early Arian controversy, as well as showing the theological backdrop of Athanasius' insight on Christ as mediator. It further demonstrates the contemporary relevance of the issue by giving an Athanasian critique of the modern Christology of Roger Haight.

Scholars of the patristic era have paid more attention to the dogmatic tradition in their period than to the development of Christian mystical theology. This book aims to redress the balance. Recognizing that the intellectual form of this tradition was decisively influenced by Platonic ideas of the soul’s relationship to God, the book begins with an examination of Plato and Platonism. The discussion of the Fathers which follows shows how the mystical tradition is at the heart of their thought and how the dogmatic tradition both moulds and is the reflection of mystical insights and concerns. This new edition of a classic study of the diverse influences upon Christian spirituality includes a new Epilogue which brings the text completely up to date.

Augustine is a pivotal figure in the history of the concept of will, but what is his ‘theory of will’? This book investigates Augustine’s use of ‘will’ in one particular context, his dialogue On Free Choice of the Will, taking seriously its historical and philosophical form. First, it finds that the dialogical nature of On Free Choice of the Will has been missed, as exemplified by the unhistorical and misleading modern attributions of names to the speakers. Secondly, the commonplace that Augustine changed his mind in the course of its composition is shown to be unfounded, and a case is made for its argumentative coherence. Thirdly, it is shown that it is the form and structure of On Free Choice of the Will that give philosophical content to Augustine’s theory of will. The dialogue constitutes a ‘way in to the will’ that itself instantiates a concept of will. At the heart of this structure is a particular argument that depends on an appeal to a first-person perspective, which ties the vocabulary of will to a concept of freedom and responsibility. This appeal is significantly similar to other arguments deployed by Augustine which are significantly similar to Descartes’ ‘cogito ergo sum’, ‘I think therefore I am’. The book goes on to investigate how Augustine’s ‘way in’ relates to these cogito-like arguments as they occur in Augustine’s major and most read works, the Confessions, the City of God, and On the Trinity. The relationship of Augustine’s to Descartes’ ‘cogito’ is also discussed. Augustine elucidates, within a particular Platonic theory of knowledge, a ‘theory of will’ that is grounded in a ‘way in’, which takes the conditions and limits of knowledge seriously.

What if there is no strong evidence that God exists? Is belief in God when faced with a lack of evidence illegitimate and improper? Evidentialism answers yes. According to Evidentialism, it is impermissible to believe any proposition lacking adequate evidence. And, if any thesis enjoys the status of a dogma among philosophers, it is Evidentialism. Presenting a direct challenge to Evidentialism are pragmatic arguments for theism, which are designed to support belief in the absence of adequate evidence. Pascal's Wager is the most prominent theistic pragmatic argument, and issues in epistemology, the ethics of belief, and decision theory, as well as philosophical theology, all intersect at the Wager. This book explores various theistic pragmatic arguments and the objections employed against them. It presents a new version of the Wager, the so-called ‘Jamesian Wager’, and argues that this survives the objections hurled against theistic pragmatic arguments and provides strong support for theistic belief. Objections found in Voltaire, Hume, and Nietzsche against the Wager are scrutinized, as are objections issued by Richard Swinburne, Richard Gale, and other contemporary philosophers. The ethics of belief, the many-gods objection, the problem of infinite utilities, and the propriety of a hope-based acceptance are also examined.

What is the meaning of the word ‘grace’? Can Wittgenstein's maxim that the meaning of a word is its usage help explicate the claims that Christians have made about grace? When Christians use the word, they reference within language the point of contact between humanity and the divine. This book suggests that grace is not an occult object but rather an insight, a moment when we perceive God to be active on our behalf. The book examines the biblical evidence that grace begins as a recognition of God's favour, before considering Augustine as the theologian who champions history rather than nature as the place of encounter with grace. Aquinas' work on grace is also explored, retrieving the saint's thought on three seminal concepts: nature, form, and the striving intellect. Overall, the book suggests that grace is the perception of a form, an awareness that the human person is being addressed by the world itself.

The works of Ambrosiaster, a Christian writing in Rome in the late 4th century, were influential on at the time and throughout the Middle Ages. This book starts by addressing the problem of the author's mysterious identity (which scholars have puzzled over for centuries) and places him in a broad historical and intellectual context. Later, it addresses Ambrosiaster's political theology, an idea which has been explored in other late Roman Christian writers but which has never been addressed in his works. The book also looks at how Ambrosiaster's attitudes to social and political order were formed on the basis of theological concepts and the interpretation of scripture, and shows that he espoused a rigid hierarchical and monarchical organization in the church, society, and the Roman empire. He also traced close connections between the Devil, characterized as a rebel against God, and the earthly tyrants and usurpers who followed his example.

A thematically organized, annotated anthology of translations from the Sanskrit, Tamil, and Maharashtri Prakrit devotional poetry of the South Indian Srivaisnava philosopher, sectarian preceptor (Acarya), and saint‐poet Venkatanatha or Venkatesha, also known as Vedantadesika (c. 1268‐1369). The poems collected in this volume, composed out of devotion (bhakti) for one particular Hindu god, Vishnu Devanayaka, the “Lord of Gods” at Tiruvahindrapuram, form a microcosm of the saint‐poet's work. They encompass major themes of Vedantadesika's devotional poetics, from the play of divine absence and presence in the world of religious emotions; the “telescoping” of time past and future in the eternal “present” of the poem; love, human vulnerability and the impassible perfected body of god; to the devotional experience of a “beauty that saves” and to the paradoxical coexistence of asymmetry and intimacy of lover and beloved at the heart of the divine‐human encounter. Moreover, these poems form more than a thematic microcosm, but also embrace all three of the poet's working languages—forming a linguistic one as well. Each translated poem forms a chapter in itself, has its own individual short afterword, along with detailed linguistic and thematic notes and commentary. The volume concludes, for comparative reasons, with a translation of Tirumankaiyalvar's luminous cycle of verses for Devanayaka from the Periyatirumoli. As much an argument as an anthology, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian studies, comparative religion, and Indian literatures.

Hume talks of our ‘gilding and staining’ natural objects, and of the mind's propensity to ‘spread itself’ on the world. This has led commentators to use the metaphor of ‘projection’ in connection with his philosophy. This book spells out its meaning, the role it plays in Hume's work, and examines how, if at all, what sounds ‘projective’ in Hume can be reconciled with what sounds ‘realist’. In addition to offering some original readings of Hume's central ideas on God and the Self among other things, this book offers a detailed examination of the notion of projection and the problems it faces.

Religion has always been a part of American politics, but something profound has changed in recent decades. This book demonstrates that, beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980, US politicians have employed religion as a partisan weapon, using it in a no-holds-barred calculus designed to attract voters, identify enemies, and solidify power. The book reveals this political approach by identifying four crucial religious signals used by leading Republicans and Democrats, from Reagan to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to the front-running candidates for the 2008 presidential election. In their emphasis on God and faith in public addresses, commemorations of tragedies and requests for divine blessing for the nation, the issue agendas pursued, and even the audiences addressed and the nature of Christmas celebrations, today's political leaders use religion for partisan gain in a manner distinct from those who came before. These signals become apparent through analysis of thousands of public communications by American politicians over the past seventy-five years, the tracking of public sentiment on several topics during the same period, and the perspectives of interest groups and political strategists. The result of these developments is an environment in the United States in which religion and politics have become almost inseparably intertwined — an outcome which benefits savvy politicians but endangers the vitality of church, state, and the entire American experiment in democracy.

This book contains in eight chapters the revised text of eight Gifford lectures, which were delivered at the University of St Andrews in 2003. The problem of evil may be formulated as a question addressed to theists: why would an all-powerful and benevolent God permit the existence of vast amounts of truly horrible suffering? Many reflective people are convinced that this question has no answer. The reasons that underlie this conviction can be formulated as an argument for the non-existence of God, the so-called argument from evil: if there were a God, he would not permit the existence of vast amounts of truly horrible suffering; since such suffering exists, there is no God. The examination of the problem of evil in these chapters is largely an examination of the argument from evil, which the author of the book regards as a paradigmatically philosophical argument. The conclusion of the main argument of the chapters (which takes the form of a debate centred on the ‘free-will defence’) is that the argument from evil is, like most philosophical arguments, a failure. The following topics receive special attention: the concept of God; success and failure in philosophical argument; versions of the argument from evil that depend on the vast amount of evil in the world and versions of the argument that depend on a particular evil, such as the Holocaust; the free-will defence; animal suffering; and the problem of the hiddenness of God.

Different theologians give different accounts of the kind of faith that is necessary for the practice of a religion such as Christianity. For some it is simply belief that there is a God (and that he has done various actions); for others it is trust in God. This book analyses the nature of belief and trust, and considers when belief and trust are rational. It concludes that the practice of a religion requires a faith which involves both trust and belief, but a fairly weak kind of belief. The book reaches this conclusion by analysing the purposes for practising a religion — the rendering of due worship and obedience to God, and the attainment of salvation for oneself and others. Someone's religious practice is rational in so far as he or she has reason for believing that practising his or her religion is the best way to achieve these purposes, and that these purposes are greatly worthwhile.

This book sets out views about some of the deepest questions in philosophy. The fundamental question of metaphysics is: what does reality consist of? To answer this it is necessary to say what kinds of fact obtain, and what constitutes their holding good. Facts correspond with true propositions, or true thoughts: when we know which propositions, or thoughts, in general, are true, we shall know what facts there are in general. This book considers the relation between metaphysics, our conception of the constitution of reality, and semantics, the theory that explains how statements are determined as true or as false in terms of their composition out of their constituent expressions. The book investigates the two concepts on which the bridge that connects semantics to metaphysics rests, meaning and truth, and the role of justification in a theory of meaning. It then examines the special semantic and metaphysical issues that arise with relation to time and tense, putting forward the author's controversial view of reality as indeterminate: there may be no fact of the matter about whether an object does or does not have a given property. We have to relinquish our deep-held realist understanding of language, the illusion that we know what it is for any proposition that we can frame to be true independently of our having any means of recognizing its truth, and accept that truth depends on our capacity to apprehend it. The book concludes with a chapter about God.

Hindu God, Christian God, an exercise in comparative theology, proposes that theology today is an interreligious discipline and illustrates this with reference to Christianity and Hinduism. Thinkers in many religious traditions share similar theological questions and problems in their quest to understand their faith, and so too use comparable methods for seeking right answers. However, much traditions emphasize their uniqueness and the necessity of faith, their thinkers usually teach, and often such teachings are recorded and become available as books that can be read and understood, and even translated. Religions are partially intelligible to outsiders; reasoning inquirers, in beginning to understand various beliefs and practices, cross even the most firmly fixed religious boundaries. In the process, they learn from the new tradition and also see their own tradition anew, by a comparative reading process. The best theology is therefore not only interreligious but also comparative, well versed in how different traditions have dealt with the same concerns.

It is also dialogical, since authors must explain their ideas in ways that at least make sense to thinkers in the other traditions being discussed; they also need to be willing to learn from the critiques and responses of those other thinkers. Lastly, the discovery of common ground and shared concerns does not mean agreement; believers can still disagree and continue to hold views at odds with what others believe. Apologetics remains an issue.

Hindu God, Christian God argues these points by bringing into conversation Christian theological beliefs – exemplified by the writings of Richard Swinburne, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, and Karl Barth — and beliefs from some major Hindu traditions, including Nyaya [Logic], Vaisnavism [devotion to Visnu], and Saivism [devotion to Siva], as expressed in classic Sanskrit‐ and Tamil‐language texts. Issues discussed include Hindu and Christian views of God's nature; proofs for God's existence; the true religion; incarnation or divine embodiment; revelation as offering definitive knowledge of religious truth.

The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All is one of the major works from the golden age of Egyptian literature, the Middle Kingdom (c. 1980–1630 bc). The poem provides one of the most searching explorations of human motivation and divine justice to survive from ancient Egypt, and its stark pessimism questions many of the core ideologies that underpinned the Egyptian state and monarchy. It begins with a series of laments portraying an Egypt overwhelmed by chaos and destruction, and develops into an examination of why these disasters should happen, and who bears responsibility for them: the gods, the king, or humanity. This volume provides the first full literary analysis of this poem for a century. It provides a detailed study of questions such as: its date of composition; its historicity; the identity of its protagonists and setting; its reception history within Egyptian culture; and whether it really is a unified literary composition, or a redacted collection of texts of heterogenous origin.

This book provides a cognitive scientific perspective to beliefs about supernatural agents. First, human intuitions about agents, agency, and counterintuitive concepts are outlined and explained. Second, various kinds of folk beliefs and theological doctrines about souls and spirits are analyzed in the light of the human cognitive architecture, using descriptions of spirit possession and shamanism as materials. Third, scholastic discussions of God’s cognitive capacities as well as folk-psychological God beliefs are analyzed. This analysis combines with a discussion of Buddhist ideas of soullesness and of buddhahood in textual traditions and in folk beliefs. Beliefs about God and buddhas are shown to rest on the same cognitive capacities of understanding agency and intentionality that underlie spirit beliefs. The Buddhist doctrine of soullessness was originally a denial of the self as a separate spiritual entity, not a denial of personal agency. God and buddhas differ from ordinary agents in that they are believed to have open access to all minds. Therefore, they can serve as means of representing what persons believe others to believe. Such divine minds are also used as an explanation for the fact that the whole of reality is intuitively experienced as if intentionally directed by a personal will. The book ends with a discussion of the future of religion and atheism.

To create a possible world is to actualize it strongly or weakly. A world is prime if God can create it and he cannot create a world better than it. This book's conclusions include: (1) If there is at least one prime world, then if God does create some world he will create one of them. (2) If there are no prime worlds, then it does not follow that God does not exist. Instead, what follows is that if God creates a world he will create one that is good enough, despite the fact that he could create a world which is better. (3) These conclusions do not give rise to a good objection to theism, based on the apparent fact that the actual world is improvable, and is not good enough. (4) Even if there is a best world, or several equal‐best worlds, God cannot create any of them. (5) A good partial theodicy for evil can be provided, appealing to goods bound up with human free will, moral responsibility, and the roles of individuals' own personal traits in shaping their own and other people's lives. The partial theodicy is neutral between theological compatibilism and libertarianism. (6) The problem of evil does not provide a very strong objection to the existence of God.

Cursory allusions to the relation between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are common in philosophical literature, but there has been little in the way of serious and comprehensive commentary on the relationship between their ideas. This book attempts both to close this gap and to offer important independent readings of Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's conceptions of philosophy and religious belief. Chapter 1 carefully documents Kierkegaard's influence on Wittgenstein, while Chapters 2 and 3 provide trenchant criticisms of two prominent attempts that have been made to compare the two thinkers — those of D. Z. Phillips and James Conant. Chapter 4 develops Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's concerted criticisms of certain standard conception of religious belief, and defends their own positive conception against the common charges of ‘fideism’ and ‘irrationalism’. As well as contributing to the contemporary debate about how to read Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's work, this book addresses issues of central concern not only to scholars of Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, but to anyone interested in issues surrounding the philosophy of religion, or the ethical aspects of philosophical practice as such.