It is often argued that religious experience should enjoy the epistemic presumption of innocence (EPI), analogous to the deliverances of perception, memory and other non-inferential basic beliefs. However, many religious belief systems incompatible with theism (theistic-unfriendly in my terminology) would also count as justified on this presumption. Awareness of the vast number of theistic-unfriendly beliefs that are epistemically on a par with theism can significantly undermine confidence in the latter. To counter this challenge, defenders of theism could resort to two core naturalistic claims: that the physical realm is causally closed, and that mental states supervene on physical states. Given naturalism, supernatural agents, including God, are not able to produce humans’ religious experience and beliefs by direct interventions. However, a theistic God could take an alternative route to provide people elected by Him with true religious beliefs through causal processes prearranged at the moment of creation of the physical world. By contrast, low-ranking spirits and polytheistic deities cannot act in this way, either because they do not participate in the process of creation or, if they do, because they lack full control over the initial conditions of the universe. It follows that theistic-unfriendly beliefs arise by chance rather than through reliable truth-aimed belief-producing processes. Under naturalism, therefore, such beliefs cannot be justified, even if, by unlikely coincidence, they are true. This naturalistic argument for theism serves to boost confidence in theistic belief by narrowing the range of rationally available religious options.

Theodicies attempt to explain why evil and suffering might exist in a world governed by an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good God. Some theodicies focus on pointing out benefits that suffering seems necessary for, though in many cases the benefits are primarily for someone other than the sufferer. Some philosophers find it morally objectionable for God to let one person suffer in order to benefit someone else, and this is thought to be a weakness of some otherwise promising theodicies. I discuss two moral concerns in this context: a mere-means-to-an-end concern and a concern about horrendous evils remaining undefeated. I argue that incorporating a doctrine of reincarnation may help some theodicies resolve both of these moral concerns, giving theodicists reason to turn towards such doctrines.

Perry Hendricks (2025) argues that theism is not only compatible with what he calls ‘pointless atheism’ (instances of non-resistant non-belief that do not serve a greater good) but also makes it expected. His case combines the Responsibility Objection (RO) – the view that God permits non-resistant non-belief because it’s required for theists to bear responsibility for bringing others into relationship with God – with a William Hasker-inspired argument concerning motivation and rationality. Hendricks’s core argument can be expressed in two distinct yet interrelated ways: a ‘motivation’ formulation and a ‘rationality’ formulation. I examine each in turn. I argue that, even granting (RO) and the rest of Hendricks’s assumptions, each formulation fails. (RO), together with a few further assumptions to which Hendricks also seems committed, leads to conclusions that undermine rather than support his argument. Thus, we have at least as much reason to reject as to accept his conclusion, and without further clarification and support, his case remains incomplete.

Some philosophers and theologians argue that if God will save everyone, then earthly life is pointless. No matter how good earthly life is, heaven would be far better. So we would have been better off if God had started us off in heaven. I present and defend two objections to this argument. First, time on earth does not result in a deduction from time in heaven. Pick whatever amount of time you might wish to spend in heaven. You will spend that much time in heaven whether you are on earth first or not. Second, given origin essentialism, we could not start off in heaven rather than earth. Our very existence depends on our earthly origins.

This article critically re-examines the long-standing dominance of constructivism in debates concerning the epistemic reliability of religious experience. It argues that the epistemic reliability of such experiences can be more supported not through a strictly cognitivistic framework, but rather through an embodied approach. By interpreting religious experience from the perspective of embodied cognition, this article offers a possible resolution to the prolonged impasse between religious-experience-based epistemology and constructivism. Moreover, it proposes not merely a compatibility between the two paradigms, but the potential for an integrative framework that moves beyond their traditional opposition.

In this paper, I draw on feminist resources to argue that Christian analytic philosophers of religion have good reason not only to focus more thoroughly on the topic of love in their treatments of the divine nature but also to give it a substantial and transformative role in the divine nature. The way forward, I propose, involves three moves: (1) designate a place for love in the divine nature, (2) attend to feminist insights on love when doing so, and (3) consider how these interventions transform our understanding of God overall. I then begin this work. Starting with the first task, I consider two ways we might conceptualize love within the divine nature. On the first (which I call ‘the mutually conditioning approach’), love is assigned equal shaping power and, on the second (which I call ‘the orienting trait approach’), love is given enlarged shaping power in the divine nature. In comparing the two, I conclude that both have the good outcome of resulting in a transformed view of God. However, though the second option is more radical and metaphysically complex, we have good reason to prefer it to the first both from philosophical reflection on love’s nature and for its coherence with the Christian tradition. After clarifying how my argument relates to divine simplicity, I begin working towards accomplishing the second and third tasks by considering how the orienting trait approach applies to the topic of divine violence.

Standard presentations of the fine-tuning argument for theism require that we have a priori insight, on the basis of moral considerations, into what God is likely to do. Standard versions of the sceptical theist response to the evidential problem of evil deny that we have such insight (at least to any significant extent). These facts call into question whether sceptical theists can consistently endorse the fine-tuning argument. In this paper, I present a version of the fine-tuning argument that sceptical theists may consistently endorse, as it does not rely on our ability to make a priori judgements concerning divine intentions.

Theodicies aim at explaining why an omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good God might enable the existence of evil and the suffering it causes. I draw on an idea from eighteenth-century Italian Jewish philosopher and kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto to develop a ‘world-building theodicy’. The main idea is that God wanted his creatures to participate in the creation of the world and manifest themselves as godlike mini creators. Therefore, God created an unfinished world full of natural dangers and evil-doing people, leaving creatures to develop the world into a utopia through their own hard work. This theodicy is designed to account for all types of worldly evil and any finite amount, all without controversial doctrines about free will.

Following Heath White, let ‘divine determinism’ denote the pairing of the following theses: ‘(1) the facts about God’s will entail every other contingent fact, and (2) the facts about God’s will are explanatorily prior to every other fact’. In the article, we develop a theological version of Peter van Inwagen’s so-called Direct Argument and show that, if sound, the Theological Direct Argument leads to the conclusion that divine determinism is incompatible with human moral responsibility. But, the soundness of the argument depends upon two inference rules, one of which, called Rule B, is controversial. So, in the third section of the article, we offer a novel, two-part defence of Rule B. This defence, in the first part, has to do with how truth, in a fairly trivial way, depends on the world. The second part of the defence has to do with the way that the logic of conditionals works. The upshot of this defence is that counter-examples to Rule B are impossible. Even so, should that defence fail, we also consider, in section four, a way of reformulating Rule B that, if successful, circumvents alleged counter-examples to the original statement of Rule B.

In this article, I discuss the inadequacy of the solution to the problem of evil in a God-created world proposed by the African perfect God theists, Kwame Gyekye and Ebunoluwa Oduwole, and highlight the success of the limited God framework of Kwasi Wiredu, J.A.I. Bewaji, and the Chimakonams in accounting for the evil in the world. However, implicit in the limitation thesis is the claim that God did his best at the time he created the world, such that the evil in it cannot be further reduced to allow for a better world. I argue that the limited God view offers a good reason to believe that a limited God can reduce the evil in the world and make it better, once the deity is conceived as a sufficiently powerful, knowledgeable, and good being with the capacity for continuous improvement within the bounds of limitation.

Theists believe in a transcendent personal creator that is maximally perfect and intervenes in the creation. Deists believe in a transcendent personal creator that is maximally perfect and does not intervene in the creation. One alleged problem for deism is that its God cannot be maximally perfect. A God that intentionally and knowingly creates a world replete with suffering and anguish yet fails to intervene to ameliorate it is not morally perfect. Thus, theism is better off than deism. I argue that the God of theism is in just as much trouble vis-à-vis omnibenevolence as the God of deism. More specifically, theistic responses to why God answers some but not all petitionary prayers either (i) show theism’s God is less than morally perfect in the same way deism’s God is alleged to be, or (ii) are likewise open to deists.

Within the space of monotheistic options, trinitarian monotheism holds a puzzling place. It asserts that God is a single being who is, somehow, also three distinct persons. This form of monotheism has regularly been charged with being either inconsistent, unintelligible, or undermotivated – and possibly all three. While recent explorations of trinitarian monotheism have tended to rely on work in metaphysics, this paper turns to the philosophy of mind, showing that functionalist theories of mind prove to be surprisingly hospitable to trinitarian monotheism. This paper will address only the inconsistency and unintelligibility objections, showing that if role-functionalism (or something near enough) is both consistent and conceivable, then it is both consistent and conceivable that: God is a single being who is exactly three distinct persons because there is one primary divine person who interacts with exactly one system-sharing re-realisation of his own person-type.

This article reinterprets John Milton’s Paradise Lost as a contribution to contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Milton offers a novel free-will defence, similar to Alvin Plantinga’s, grounded in original philosophical accounts of God, creation, freedom, and meta-ethics. Milton’s monist God creates worlds and creatures ex deo out of God-self. God – and everything else – is animated matter: one substance both material and spiritual. Milton rejects materialism, dualism, and idealism. Only animist monism delivers the libertarian freedom that Milton’s free-will defence demands. God has agent-causal libertarian freedom. God’s reasons don’t necessitate God’s choices. God freely chooses which worlds to create, which commands to issue, which hierarchies to institute. God radically transcends creatures – especially in relation to God’s meta-ethical power. Milton’s implicit meta-ethic, rejecting both voluntarism and intellectualism, resembles Robert Adams’s theist meta-ethic, where God’s nature determines excellence and God’s actual commands determine obligation. God also plays another meta-ethical role – instituting hierarchies where some creatures command others. Satan’s fall is epistemic and meta-ethical. He refuses to recognise God’s meta-ethical transcendence – to believe that God is God. Belief in God always requires a leap of faith beyond evidence and argument – because even perfect creatures cannot comprehend God’s transcendence. Creaturely epistemic freedom means there is no explanation why some angels fall while others stand.

This paper examines Ballard’s narrow pro-theistic argument for the claim that a world created by God would possess more bestowed worth than a world not created by God. I argue that not only could the world have just as much bestowed worth were it not created by God, but it could possibly have more.

Worldviews can serve as a resource or an obstacle when navigating intellectual and existential challenges encountered in life. My objective in this article is to identify and analyse the various ways in which people’s worldviews can shift, break down, evolve, or be strengthened by their life experiences. The proposed model of worldview formation identifies five outcomes that an encounter with what I refer to as existentially significant life events can have: worldview compartmentalisation, integration, revision, conversion, and confirmation. I will explain the content and function of these categories, provide concrete examples, and discuss their rationality.

I present a new ontological argument that rests on two evaluative theses, both inspired by Anselm’s Proslogion 2. First, for any F and Q, it is no better for there to be an F, given Q, than it is for there to be something perfect. Second, it is better for there to be something perfect if there is such a thing than if there isn’t. It follows that there is something perfect. I examine these premises, consider some parodies, and suggest possible atheistic replies.

This paper argues for a revised approach to religious literacy that I call the interreligious attentiveness (IA) approach. I argue that this approach is better than those endorsed by other scholars in the academic study of religion – namely, knowledge, analysis, and skills approaches. I draw attention to the limitations of these approaches by virtue of three challenges: conversion (exclusivist groups), multiple religious belonging, and motivation. I then argue that the IA approach offers a more effective response to these challenges and should be regarded as the preferred approach.

The idea that God must relate perfectly to our subjectivity is central to Linda Zagzebski’s work on omnisubjectivity. There is a hitherto undiagnosed tension, however, between different criteria one might use to judge what perfectly relating to our subjectivity consists in. God’s relationship to what Zagzebski calls ‘counteractuals’, individuals that do not exist but that could have, brings this tension into focus. On the one hand, if God does not know what the subjective experiences of counteractuals would be like, then God’s omnisubjectivity would appear to be unacceptably limited in scope. On the other hand, if God knows the subjectivity of actual creatures in the same way that God knows the subjectivity of counteractual creatures, then the motivation for omnisubjectivity ends up being undercut to a significant extent. This essay resolves this tension with a model that draws on interpersonal perception and divine introspection.

A non-identity theodicy is any attempt to explain why an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, and all-loving God might cause or permit the pain and suffering of his creatures that makes use of one or more claims about the identity conditions of those creatures. Most non-identity theodicies make use of one identity thesis in particular: origin essentialism, the thesis that the particular circumstances in which a person first comes into existence are essential to that person. In this paper, I argue that, despite some impressive upshots, origin essentialist non-identity theodicies fall short in at least two ways. I argue, furthermore, that both of these shortcomings can be rectified by building a non-identity theodicy on a stronger identity thesis: superessentialism, the thesis according to which every event in the life of a person, and not just the circumstances in which he or she first begins to exist, is essential to that person.

In The Image of God (2022), Eleonore Stump seeks to address a residual problem that remains even after a successful theodicy, namely the problem of mourning. The problem of mourning concerns the appropriateness of certain evaluative responses (such as grief or disappointment) with respect to the world that contains suffering. To answer this problem, Stump seeks to demonstrate how lives with suffering are maximally great precisely because they contain suffering: some person S’s most glorious self is to be located in her participating in the sufferings of Christ and thereby magnifying God’s love in herself. This paper identifies a problem with Eleonore Stump’s solution to the problem of mourning, namely valorisation: Stump’s solution entails that there is a type of suffering that is constitutive of value and therefore a reason-giving end in it itself. Valorisation is something we should avoid. I therefore present a different solution to the problem of mourning that is based on the incommensurability of S’s best lives. After this I address one final issue – the problem of preference – that is in the neighbourhood of Stump’s problem of mourning. I argue that if S’s best lives are incommensurate, we can reject the preference problem as incoherent.