The object of this article is to present Christian theology as a case of a Harrean theory, as a mapping which links the members of one set of entities to those of another in a systematic way. I will divide the article into four parts. The first one will be devoted to a brief presentation of the main characteristics of Harré's proposal. Once the fundamentals of the Harrean perspective are presented, the second section will be the presentation of Christian theology as a case of a Harrean theory. The third and fourth sections are concerned with showing how two classic theological topics, conversion and prophecy, can be framed within this perspective in a cohesive and fruitful way.

The Quran contains numerous references to evil and some of these indicate that the responsibility of some instances of evil, which I call self-inflicted evil, lies with human beings rather than God. This idea of evil leads to an exploration of two interconnected issues in philosophical and theological discussions, moral responsibility and desert, along with the related tension between freedom of action and divine determinism. The article delves into this tension as it appears from the Quran and prevailing standpoints in Islamic theology. I propose that the tension between freedom of action and divine determinism resists a satisfactory reconciliation, which ultimately affects the plausibility of the idea of evil as self-inflicted. I further propose that embracing the contradictions arising from verses expressing freedom and responsibility, on the one hand, and those indicating divine determinism, on the other, could be a viable approach for the theologian.

After briefly outlining the fine-tuning argument (FTA), I explain how it relies crucially on the claim that it is not improbable that God would design a fine-tuned universe. Against this premise stands the divine psychology objection: the contention that the probability that God would design a fine-tuned universe is inscrutable. I explore three strategies for meeting this objection: (i) denying that the FTA requires any claims about divine psychology in the first place, (ii) defining the motivation and intention to design a fine-tuned universe into the theistic hypothesis, and (iii) providing arguments that the relevant probability is not terribly low. While I reject the first two, I conclude, in line with the third, that considerations about life's objective value establish that it is not absurdly improbable that God would design a fine-tuned universe, whether one regards the FTA as an inference merely to a cosmic designer, or to theism proper. Accordingly, the divine psychology objection fails.

Contemporary analytic treatments of meaning in life in the English-speaking Anglo-American-Australasian tradition have largely proceeded from the atheistic and naturalistic assumptions common to the sciences. With the recent publication of Seachris and Goetz's God and Meaning (2016), T. J. Mawson's God and the Meanings of Life (2016), and Thaddeus Metz's God, Soul and the Meaning of Life (2019), more analytic philosophers might be drawn to (re)examining what role, if any, God might play in life's meaning. But the focus tends to be on ‘God’ as understood in the Abrahamic faiths. Examining meaning in the light of another concept of God, familiar to billions of individuals in various Eastern religions and intellectual traditions, might offer useful insights. I have two principle aims in this article. First, I describe an ancient Indian concept of ‘God’, showing how it radically differs from the concept of God currently under examination by philosophers of meaning. Second, I offer a novel case for why and how this concept of ‘God’ could fruitfully contribute to analytic discussions on God's possible role in life's meaning.

This article argues that Thomas Kuhn's landmark work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, has not been adequately explored by theologians and scholars in the field of science and religion. While many cite Kuhn to suggest that science and religion share structural similarities, I contend that his work is crucial in addressing current debates about the definitions of ‘science’ and ‘religion’ and the potential for intellectual progress between them. Kuhn's framework provides more than a justification for adhering to incommensurable worldviews; it offers a nuanced understanding of how science and religion interact and the significance of tacit knowledge in scientific practice. This article explains Kuhn's focus on exemplars in his philosophy of science, which underpin his argument for key differences between science and theological inquiry. The article concludes that Kuhn's pluralistic view of truth offers theologians an opportunity to engage more deeply with science, rather than sidestepping it entirely.

A prominent challenge to analytic theology charges that its methodology leads to idolatry. This article explores a response to this challenge that draws upon the Eastern Orthodox apophatic tradition. Apophatic approaches, which emphasize how little we can truthfully say or know about God, are not exclusive to Orthodox Christianity. But these views take a unique form within the tradition insofar as they accord a prominent role to the distinction between God’s essence and God’s energies. The divine essence is what it is to be God, what God is as such, what God is at God’s core. In contrast, the divine energies are properties, modes, or activities of God not included in the divine essence but intimately related to it. Proponents of the distinction have claimed that it can help theorists to navigate the Christian tradition’s cataphatic and apophatic commitments, which don’t always sit comfortably together. This article argues that there are ways of crafting the essence/energy distinction that can also help to address the ‘Idolatry Argument’ against analytic theology.

Establishing the distribution of belief in something, especially something that spans cultures and times, requires close attention to empirical evidence and to certain inadequacies in our concept of belief. Arguments from divine hiddenness have quickly become one of the most important argument types in the philosophy of religion. These arguments and responses to them typically rely on robust but relatively undefended empirical commitments as to the distribution of belief in God. This article synthesizes results from psychology, anthropology, and the cognitive science of religion to show that the distribution of belief in God is much more messy and much more philosophically interesting than is currently appreciated. I then derive some implications for how one might reconceive the hiddenness debate in light of these findings.

This article examines a construal of the doctrine of original sin which affirms the cognitive corruption of human faculties but denies that humans carry original guilt for Adam's fall or for cognitive corruption. All humans require Christ's atonement, because they either inevitably commit at least one sin or are rejected by God for other reasons. We go on to identify three problems with this account. The first problem is the ‘inevitability’ of sinning. Here, the defender is forced either to accept a compatibilist analysis of responsibility or provide a libertarian-friendly analysis of ‘inevitability’. The latter option contradicts the Augustinian contention that it is impossible for sinners to lead a life of virtue and holiness. The second problem has to do with the mechanics of the cognitive effects of sin. The cognitive effects of original sin make it very difficult or inevitable for humans to perform meritorious actions and very easy or inevitable for them to commit sinful actions. If the sinner's degree of control over her sinful actions is so low, it seems that she does not deserve divine blame and punishment for failing to commit meritorious actions. Finally, we raised some problems regarding the fate of the non-culpable sinners.

Reflective thinking often predicts less belief in God or less religiosity – so-called analytic atheism. However, those correlations involve limitations: widely used tests of reflection confound reflection with ancillary abilities such as numeracy; some studies do not detect analytic atheism in every country; experimentally encouraging reflection makes some non-believers more open to believing in God; and one of the most common online research participant pools seems to produce lower data quality. So analytic atheism may be less than universal or partially explained by confounding factors. To test this, we developed better measures, controlled for more confounds, and employed more recruitment methods. All four studies detected signs of analytic atheism above and beyond confounds (N > 70,000 people from five of six continental regions). We also discovered analytic apostasy: the better a person performed on reflection tests, the greater their odds of losing their religion since childhood – even when controlling for confounds. Analytic apostasy even seemed to explain analytic atheism: apostates were more reflective than others and analytic atheism was undetected after excluding apostates. Religious conversion was rare and unrelated to reflection, suggesting reflection’s relationships to conversion and deconversion are asymmetric. Detected relationships were usually small, indicating reflective thinking is a reliable albeit marginal predictor of apostasy.

In several works, Joanna Leidenhag has discussed the theological merits of panpsychism, the idea that consciousness is ubiquitous in the universe. I shall pursue a related project here in which I consider how a variant of panpsychism called cosmopsychism, in which the universe itself is seen to be conscious, can answer key questions regarding the cosmic scope of sin and redemption in the new creation view of eschatology. After outlining the new creation view and considering key problems in the contemporary debate about cosmopsychism in philosophy of mind, I shall propose a cosmopsychist account of the new creation view that can address these queries regarding cosmic scope.

In this article, I consider the cases of religious Moorean propositions of the form ‘d, but I don't believe that d’ and ‘d, but I believe that ~d’, where d is a religious dogma, proposition, or part of a creed. I argue that such propositions can be genuinely and rationally asserted and that this fact poses a problem for traditional analysis of religious assertion as an expression of faith and of religious faith as entailing belief. In the article, I explore the possibility of undermining these commonly held assumptions and argue that the assertability of religious Moorean propositions can be justified by an account of faith as an intention to form religious beliefs. In the end, I also consider the consequences of such a stance, especially concerning the debate on the ethics of religious belief and doxastic voluntarism.

In this article, I argue that God is authoritative over us because he is our divine, causal parent. As our causal parent, God has duties to relate to us, but he can only fulfil those duties if he has the practical authority to give us commands aimed at our sanctification. From ought-implies-can reasoning, I conclude that God has that authority. After I make this argument, I show how the view has significant advantages over extant arguments for divine authority and can help solve other significant problems in philosophy of religion.

This article explores the intersection of two developing fields of study: the psychological field of shared intentionality and the philosophy of religion field of ramified natural theology. In shared intentionality, agents share mental states and cooperate to achieve a common goal. Many psychologists in this field believe that of all the primates, only humans share intentionality – humans alone form a ‘we’. Ramified natural theology is the project of presenting philosophical evidences for core doctrines of the Christian faith. In this article I investigate some applications of shared intentionality for Christian natural theology. In the Anselmian tradition I offer two deductive arguments that deploy shared intentionality to argue that there are multiple divine persons. I then suggest that analogical arguments – often overlooked by philosophers of religion – provide a better fit for psychological findings, such as shared intentionality. After sketching some fundamental features of analogical arguments, I advance two arguments by analogy for the conclusion that God, like humans, shares intentionality. These arguments show that the psychology of shared intentionality, and empirical psychology more generally, is a promising source for theological reflection.

This qualitative interview-based study examines metaphysical views of natural scientists (n = 35), focusing on the relationship of self to the universe. We use as a framework the idea of oneness, the view that the universe is fundamentally one thing. We examine how scientists situate their positions on religion and ultimate reality engaging with this concept. Our main research questions are: (1) How do natural scientists conceive of ultimate reality? What is their ontological picture of the world/universe? (2) How do natural scientists relate their spiritual, religious, and ethical outlook to their scientific topic(s) of study? Participants hold a sophisticated range of views that are influenced both by religious self-identification and disciplinary field. They regularly turn to philosophy and theology to guide their forays into ultimate reality, including philosophical and theological traditions such as Daoism, Buddhism, Calvinism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and ancient philosophy. We found that natural sciences and humanities do not compete, but are complementary when it comes to meaning-making.

This article develops a novel argument that God’s existence would greatly increase our prospects for meaning in life. The key idea is that if God exists, He stands in certain relations to the world that would confer value upon it. For instance, God would be its creator and sustainer. The world would thus gain value in much the way that relics gain value by their links with historical persons and events. And crucially, as a result of this infusion of value, our lives go better because the things we engage with matter more.

We offer an account of the metaphysics of persons rooted in Latter-day Saint scripture that vindicates the essentiality of origins. We then give theological support for the claim that prospects for the success of God's soul making project are bound up in God creating particular persons. We observe that these persons would not have existed were it not for the occurrence of a variety of evils (of even the worst kinds), and we conclude that Latter-day saint theology has the resources to endorse a strong soul-making non-identity theodicy. We then introduce two complications for this account rooted in the problem of horrendous evils. First, horrendous evils threaten to undermine our confidence that God is good to each created person within the context of their life. And second, horrendous evils raise concerns about the value of persons whose existence depends on the occurrence of those evils. We may wonder whether those whose existence depends on the occurrence of horrendous evils are valuable enough to motivate God's allowance of those evils. We show that by attending to important structural features of a post-mortem, pre-eschatological state called the spirit world, Latter-day Saints can ameliorate these concerns about horrendous evils.

Modal panentheism claims that God encompasses all possible worlds and that a substantial number of possible worlds exist. This article defends a version of modal panentheism that is grounded in perfect-being theology, which maintains that God holds all great-making properties to the highest possible degree. In addition to goodness, modal panentheists consider encompassment to be a great-making property, and therefore, God (a maximally encompassing being) is said to encompass all possible worlds.

Nagasawa argues that modal panentheism faces a significant problem: the modal problem of evil. The argument states that if modal realism is true, then there exists a substantial number of possible evils that contradict God’s perfect goodness. Nagasawa proceeds to claim that modal evil poses a greater threat to modal panentheism than actual evil does to traditional theism.

This article develops two responses to the modal problem of evil. The first response (maximal-panentheism) argues that God need not be all-good or all-encompassing. The second response (no evil worlds) argues that worlds contradicting God’s perfect goodness are not possible worlds. In the light of these responses, I claim the modal problem of evil for modal panentheism is no more intractable than the problem of evil for traditional theism.

In this article, an exercise in Jewish philosophy, I propose a taxonomy that can account for and organize all of the many species of holiness that we find in the Hebrew Bible. Each species admits of precise definition. Moreover, the genus as a whole can be unified by a guiding metaphor, suggested by the Bible itself. Holiness, according to this metaphor, is bestowed by a certain type of gaze, and ultimately by occupying the centre of the field of God's attention.

In this article, I propose an account of episodic memory and episodic future-directed imagination for which I invent the term, ‘embodied constructivism’. Embodied constructivism, I claim, is a more sophisticated, enactivist version of Augustine of Hippo’s constructivist account of memory and expectation on which rest his epistemic claims concerning how God is known and remembered. However, embodied constructivism avoids metaphysical issues facing Augustine’s account by drawing on cutting-edge theories in philosophy of memory, studies in experimental psychology, and recent findings in cognitive neuroscience. Embodied constructivism is a synthesis of two contemporary theories of memory: an embodied theory of memory generation – specifically, autopoietic enactivism – with a constructivist model – specifically, simulationism. As embodied constructivism asserts, mentally travelling to the past to relive it in episodic memory and mentally travelling to the future to pre-live it in future-directed imagination are co-functional processes. In addition to preserving Augustine’s epistemic claims concerning how God is remembered and known, a further upshot of embodied constructivism is that it illustrates the importance of philosophy of science to theology in its reliance on a scientifically rigorous model of memory in defence of epistemological theology.