TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology

Non-Identity Reasoning and the Hiddenness Argument

2025-05-19T18:48:30+00:00

If a theory of identity compatible with non-identity reasoning is accepted, J. L. Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument ought to be rejected. The core of non-identity reasoning is that particular persons can only come into existence under certain circumstances. Schellenberg’s hiddenness argument depends on a conception of divine love that is relationship-seeking such that God would never allow a capable person to be in a state of nonresistant nonbelief regarding the existence of God because he would always be open to relationship. Yet if particular persons can only come into existence under particular circumstances, then given Schellenberg’s own conception of divine love, God would be motivated by his love to actualize nonresistant nonbelief in order to bring about (and form relationships with) persons who can only come into existence under circumstances that include other capable persons being in a state of nonresistant nonbelief.

Editorial

2025-12-31T09:36:05+00:00

The present special issue is a direct result of the research project Providence and Free Will in the Models of Classical Theism and Analytic Theism (PROLITECA: PID2021-122633NB-100), funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Government of Spain, which sought to address this gap by articulating two central and interconnected hypotheses. The first is that theories of divine providence and human freedom are partly shaped by meta-theological frameworks, including methodological approaches such as Perfect Being Theology, as well as more general views about the aims, scope, and limits of philosophical theology. The second is that different accounts of providence both presuppose and inform distinct pictures of God, especially with respect to divine attributes such as simplicity, immutability, impassibility, which are specific to Classical Theism. Together, these two dimensions suggest that debates about providence cannot be adequately assessed in isolation from broader questions about method and about the nature of God.

Perfection and Providence

2025-08-22T10:37:13+00:00

I argue in two ways that perfect being theology does not imply any theory of providence. I argue in particular that it does not imply Molinism or its negation, and that our confidence in it should be independent of our confidence in open theism.

The slippery slope of Perfect Being Theology

2025-09-19T17:05:30+00:00

Perfect Being Theism has been reformulated by Nagasawa to avoid putative conflicts between omni-properties inside God by downgrading either of any two conflicting properties. This move has recently been pressed further by others vindicating a “fluctuating maximal God”, a God that needn’t be the highest possible being at any moment of time (nor at any place in space), as long as he will eventually be the highest possible being by the end of time. With this new conception of God, they claim to answer the most intractable conundrums of the problem of evil.

I criticize this conception of “God” because it does not meet many of the standard requirements for being God, neither philosophical (logical, metaphysical) nor religious (theological, devotional, pastoral). In sum, it is not a God who inspires awe, devotion and ultimate hope, and so cannot be the proper object of religious attitudes of any monotheist within the Abrahamic traditions.

Problemas de la categoría "teísmo clásico"

2024-08-28T08:53:19+00:00

Una de las categorías empleadas en la sistematización de las posturas en teología filosófica es “teísmo clásico”, con la que se hace referencia a un grupo indeterminado de autores que mantendrían posturas comunes acerca de Dios y la religión. Hay numerosos intentos de definición del teísmo clásico: se recogen cinco que parecen especialmente relevantes, y se valora la caracterización de Dios que atribuyen al teísmo clásico. Esta valoración revela que sólo coinciden en un atributo: la inmutabilidad. Se analizan las razones y consecuencias de esta característica, lo que da pie a mostrar que tomar como punto de partida para las discusiones teológicas una definición del teísmo clásico es un modo problemático de proceder; a partir de esto se sugieren métodos alternativos que tengan en cuenta la relevancia tanto de las religiones en las que surgen las posturas denominadas clásicas, así como los sistemas propios de los principales autores identificados como teístas clásicos.

Abstract: One of the categories used in the systematization of positions in philosophical theology is “classical theism,” which refers to an indeterminate group of authors who uphold common views regarding God and religion. There are numerous attempts to define classical theism; five particularly relevant definitions are examined, along with an evaluation of the characterization of God they attribute to classical theism. This assessment reveals that these definitions converge on only one attribute: immutability. The reasons for and consequences of this characteristic are analyzed, leading to the conclusion that using a definition of classical theism as a starting point for theological discussions is a problematic approach. Based on this, alternative methods are suggested that take into account both the relevance of the religious traditions in which so-called classical positions arise, and the specific systems of the major authors identified as classical theists.

Aquinas on Providence, Control, and Divine Simplicity

2025-12-03T19:44:01+00:00

In this article, I address Joe Schmid’s argument of providential collapse against divine simplicity. After presenting my reservations about Daniel Shield’s solution based on Aquinas’s theory of relations, I outline a three-step strategy to defend classical theism against Schmid’s argument: two steps are based on Aquinas’s doctrine of providence, and the third is based on his conception of causal control. The first step is to show that, given God’s goals in creation, fixing all the facts about God doesn’t imply that any world can come about randomly. The second step lies in showing that an indeterministic conception of providence, in which God doesn’t predetermine secondary causes but counts with their real contingency, is compatible with God’s control over His fundamental goals in creation. The third step is to show that, according to Aquinas’s conception of causal control, nothing can prevent God from having downstream control of His effects.

Divine Simplicity and the Theory of Action

2024-06-23T11:33:07+00:00

The modal collapse argument states that the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity entails that God necessarily creates whatever he creates and also that all creatures necessarily perform whatever actions they perform. In response to these objections, many authors argue that God’s willing to create this precise world and God’s knowing everything about individual creatures are at least partially extrinsic or Cambridge properties (i.e., the truthmaker of the respective propositions is, in part, a fact about something contingent other than God). This paper argues for a general view of action, in which such properties can turn out to be at least partially extrinsic. Section 1 explains why responding to the modal collapse argument requires that part of the truthmaker relating God to contingent facts be extrinsic to God, and that it is only in this part that contingency lies. Section 2 argues that this can be generally so in certain class of causal relations, where the agent remains intrinsically the same no matter the precise effect produced. Section 3 shows that free volition is at some level one of those relations, and section 4 offers some brief remarks about the difficulties that still remain in the case of knowledge.

Omnisubjectivity as a Divine Attribute from Islamic Perspective

2025-07-28T17:19:04+00:00

The paper aims to demonstrate how the concept of omnisubjectivity can be drawn upon in an attempt to solve philosophical problems pertinent to the divine attribute of omniscience in the Islamic context. Notably, we will address the charge that the concept of omniscience is logically impossible and incoherent. We will argue that omnisubjectivity could be an attribute of God in the Islamic paradigm. Furthermore, we will show that this attribute can be inferred from the primary Islamic source; the Qur’an, and that it sufficiently responds to the historical problems in terms of understanding omniscience faced by Islamic philosophers and theologians. We will argue that omnisubjectivity fulfills the conditions of both groups without facing common problems. Lastly, we will mention the benefits of adopting this model and show some philosophical and theological implications within an Islamic framework.

Revisiting Kretzmann's Argument that an Immutable God Can't Know Mutable Reality

2024-11-11T20:47:39+00:00

In this paper, we revisit Norman Kretzmann’s argument that an immutable God can’t always know what time it is. We uncover two implicit premises that, we argue, theists can simply reject once their incompatibility with their theistic commitments is made apparent. These suppositions are (i) internalism about beliefs and (ii) content essentialism. We end by considering further whether these two theses are, in fact, in conflict between themselves. If true, this would make Kretzmann’s argument dialectically unstable.

Neoclassical Theism and the Problem of Foreknowledge and Passibility

2025-07-21T23:33:59+00:00

Though it is often not recognized, there are multiple models of God being affirmed and debated throughout the history of philosophical theology. In contemporary discussion, we have developed labels for these models such as classical theism, neoclassical theism, open theism, panentheism, and pantheism. In this paper I want to discuss a unique problem that neoclassical theism faces. This is the Problem of Foreknowledge and Passibility. God is passible in that God is capable of being moved and influenced by creatures to some extent. God is capable of having a wide range of emotional responses to the world that are consistent with His perfect goodness and rationality. Also, God is capable of having maximal empathy with His creatures. Yet, there are some philosophers and theologians who think that divine passibility is inconsistent with exhaustive foreknowledge. As a neoclassical theist, I disagree. Before considering the inconsistency argument, I need to set the stage. In section 1, I shall articulate the neoclassical theistic model of God. In section 2, I will discuss some different issues related to omniscience, time, and emotions. These issues need to be developed in order to understand the objection to neoclassical theism. Then in section 3, I will develop two arguments against the compatibility of passibility and foreknowledge. There I will explain why the neoclassical theist has nothing to worry about from these objections.

Une conception raisonnable du théisme ouvert?

2025-07-19T14:45:27+00:00

Le théisme ouvert est une conception du Dieu des traditions religieuses monothéistes qui admet une évolution temporelle de Dieu, et des changements en Dieu. Elle se présente notamment comme une interprétation plus fidèle de la Révélation biblique que la conception traditionnelle du Dieu parfait, dont l'existence est hors du temps. Cette dernière semblait mieux répondre au défi d'une conciliation entre la science et la providence divine d'un côté et la liberté humaine de l'autre. Le théisme ouvert, appliqué seulement à la conception de la science divine, est favorable à la liberté, au prix d'une ingorance divine du futur contingent, et d'une évolution de la connaissance divine. Après avoir situé le théisme ouvert sur l'échiquier des positions, j'envisage l'objection de Jonathan Kvanvig qui met en cause un asymétrie cognitive en Dieu dans sa connaissance du future, l'une éternelle et certaine, l'autre en constante évolution de la conjecture vers la certitude. Je tente de répondre à cette objection en montrant qu'elle n'a pas de conséquences dramatiques, et qu'elle pourrait avoir des avantages philosophiques substantiels.

Providence as “Responsible Risk-Taking”

2025-10-28T18:17:50+00:00

This paper explores the concept of divine providence in the framework of open theism, focusing on the balance between God’s sovereignty and creaturely libertarian free will. It examines the extent to which God takes risks in creation and governance, assessing various risk-minimizing strategies, including limiting libertarian freedom, intervention through human agents, and the potential usefulness of divine foreknowledge. The discussion highlights the methodological assumptions underlying these perspectives, particularly the theological premises of a personal, risk-taking God and the metaphysical implications of presentism. The paper argues that a coherent model of providence in open theism requires a strong view of divine personhood while maintaining a nuanced approach to divine intervention. Ultimately, it suggests that God’s providential action is best understood as influencing history through creatures who freely cooperate with divine purposes rather than through unilateral intervention. This framework offers a way to reconcile divine love, human freedom, and the reality of risk within an open theist paradigm.

Can Libertarian Free Will be Reconciled with Divine Providence?

2025-02-13T16:00:42+00:00

I try to reconcile libertarian free will for created agents with a qualified understanding of divine providence. Divine providence is not absolute, since created agents have some say in how things go in the universe. But God has a great deal of providential control because, being eternal, He sees, and can act upon, all the moments of time including (what is to us) the future. An isotemporalist (eternalist, four-dimensionalist) analysis of time, on which all times are equally real, can make sense of this. But if reality is “already” all there for God, how can He act upon it to achieve His objectives? Two analogies help to answer this question; the Time Traveler and the Master Painter.

The Incoherent Root of Theological Fatalism

2025-05-19T10:28:46+00:00

This paper begins with a standard argument for theological fatalism and unravels deeper dilemmas in stages, arriving at an argument that has nothing to do with divine foreknowledge or free will. I then focus on the problem of the incoherence or at least confusion in the idea of the necessity of the past. In the final section I replace the necessity of the past with the causal closure of the past, and argue that the causal closure principle has the same problem of incoherence as the modal principle.

Of Distributive Justice and Hellfire

2025-08-28T09:55:31+00:00

Defenses of God’s permission of evil by appeal to free will are alleged to have a value problem. Laura Ekstrom argues that free will does not obviously have a value which would outweigh or justify the disvalue associated with moral evil and its consequences. I propose that a free will defense of moral evil does not need to conceive of free will as being more valuable than moral evil or its consequences. Rather, free will is a moral transformer in virtue of which created persons can deserve their moral character and those consequences which follow upon it. From this perspective, I show that the alleged ‘value problem’ rests upon controversial conceptions of distributive justice and that Thomas Aquinas gives us a way to argue plausibly that God’s decisions to allow serious consequences to result from free agency, i.e., hell, could be distributively just and compatible with God’s love for persons.