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

Editorial

Benedikt Paul Göcke — 2024-12-31

It is a great pleasure for the editors of TheoLogica to present this special issue in honour of Dean Zimmerman. Dean Zimmerman’s work in metaphysics has had a profound impact on discussions of analytic theology and the philosophy of religion over the last three decades. Few contemporary philosophers have done as much to bring analytic rigour into conversation with traditional theological concerns, or to frame metaphysical inquiry in ways that illuminate doctrines long central in the Christian intellectual tradition.

Modest Molinism

Michael Bergmann — 2024-12-31

Molinism, which says that God has middle knowledge, offers one of the most impressive and popular ways of combining libertarian creaturely freedom with full providential control by God. The aim of this paper is to explain, motivate, and defend a heretofore overlooked version of Molinism that I call ‘Modest Molinism’. In Section 1, I explain Modest Molinism and make an initial case for it. Then, in Sections 2 and 3, I defend Modest Molinism against Dean Zimmerman’s anti-Molinist argument, which is directed at all versions of Molinism, including Modest Molinism. Zimmerman’s anti-Molinist argument combines two distinct and separable challenges to Molinism that I call the ‘Irrelevance Objection’ and the ‘Extreme Manipulation Objection’. Despite the fact that Zimmerman intertwines these two objections, they require separate treatment. Thus, Section 2 will raise concerns about Zimmerman’s Irrelevance Objection and Section 3 will focus on concerns about Zimmerman’s Extreme Manipulation Objection.

Still Another Anti-Molinist Argument

Daniel Rubio — 2024-12-31

Molinists offer a tempting bargain: accept divine middle knowledge, and reap solutions to a number of philosophical/theological problems. The prime benefit we are meant to reap from middle knowledge is a solution to the problem of freedom and providence. I argue that they cannot deliver. Even if we make metaphysical and semantic assumptions that have generally been considered friendly to Molinism, Molinism is in danger of undermining divine providence altogether. The spectre of this “collapse” persists despite Molinism-friendly assumptions and plagues the best Molinist theories defended in the literature.

Open Theism and Perfect Rationality

Ryan T. Mullins — 2024-12-31

Dean Zimmerman has made significant contributions to metaphysics, philosophy of time, and philosophy of religion. In this paper, I set my focus on Zimmerman’s approach to God, time, and creation. Zimmerman has defended a model of God called open theism on which God is essentially temporal. In this paper, I will first articulate open theism. Then I will explore a series of puzzles related to God’s perfect rationality and creation. These can be stated as the following three questions. Why didn’t God create sooner? Why did God create anything at all? Why did God create this universe in particular?

Et Tu, Zimmerman?

William Hasker — 2024-12-31

Dean Zimmerman is an open theist. However, he has constructed an argument to the effect that, if simple foreknowledge (foreknowledge without middle knowledge) did exist, this knowledge would be providentially useful to God. I show that his argument fails: if simple foreknowledge did exist, it would be providentially useless.

Omnipotence

Samuel Lebens — 2024-12-31

Should an omnipotent being be able to limit its own power? Along with Swinburne, Dean Zimmerman answers in the affirmative. My intuitions push in the opposite direction. The ability to limit one's own power constitutes a vulnerability. In this paper, I argue that a great deal hangs on this issue. If God cannot revoke His own omnipotence, then only a necessarily existent being can ever create anything truly ex nihilo. Moreover, if God cannot revoke His own omnipotence, then it turns out that theism entails idealism. No wonder that Zimmerman resists. I prefer to take the plunge and endorse idealism!

Improvable Creations

Peter Van Inwagen — 2024-12-31

God must create the best. But there is no best. Therefore, there is no God. Various philosophers—among them Stephen Grover and William Rowe—have endorsed more elaborate versions of this argument. Dean Zimmerman (in “Resisting Rowe’s No-Best-World Argument for Atheism”) has subjected their defenses of the argument to careful scrutiny—scrutiny that was in fact so careful that there remains very little to say about the argument. This essay contains my attempt to supply that very little.

Why Does Anything Exist?

Joshua Rasmussen — 2024-12-31

Rasmussen develops a new answer to the question, "Why does anything exist?" He begins by describing a puzzle about how anything can exist. The puzzle motivates the quest to explain things as far as one can. To solve the puzzle, Rasmussen describes a sequence of scenes in a story about existence. The story brings to light a three-pronged explanation of existence: (i) things exist because it is impossible for nothing to have existed, (ii) it is impossible for nothing to have existed because there is a foundational reality that cannot not exist, and (iii) such a foundation would have a certain nature—to be specified—that allows it to be foundational. Rasmussen considers how this theory of fundamental reality can incorporate other large scale theories, including Platonism, axiarchism, and naturalism.

Scholastic Hylomorphism and Dean Zimmerman

Timothy Pawl — 2024-12-31

I present Dean Zimmerman’s conceptualization of the varieties of substance dualism. I then focus attention on a form of dualism that he has discussed briefly in a few places, Thomistic dualism as he calls it, or hylomorphic dualism, as I call it. After explicating hylomorphic dualism, I consider the two places where Zimmerman says the most about it, finding, in one case, a way to alleviate a worry he raises using the resources internal to hylomorphism, and, in the other case, a general agreement with his categorizing hylomorphic dualism as an intermediary position between substance dualism and materialism. Since hylomorphic dualism is something of an intermediary position between substance dualism and materialism, it stands to reason that it could be susceptible to attack from both sides. Thus, in the last portions of this article I consider the arguments Zimmerman answers against dualism and levels against materialism. I argue that the hylomorphic theorist can answer the charges against dualism at least as well as the other dualists can. I find that the main argument against materialism that Zimmerman provides, if sound, would also show any composite form of dualism to be false, too. Happily, the hylomorphic thinker has a method of denying the truth of the first premise of that argument, and so, of denying the soundness of the argument.

A Divine Alternative to Zimmerman’s Emergent Dualism

David B. Hershenov — 2024-12-31

Dean Zimmerman argues for the existence of souls as they enable us to avoid certain vagueness-inspired, metaphysical puzzles that plague materialist accounts of the person. There are far too many overlapping material thinking candidates for being the referent of “I”. Zimmerman suggests that an emergent soul whose creation is overdetermined by overlapping material entities will avoid the unwelcome overpopulation of physical thinkers. I will argue that parallel problems plague Zimmerman’s emergent dualism, there are too many souls produced where we want just one.

The Problem of People and Their Matter

Eric T. Olson — 2024-12-31

If I am a material thing, there would seem to be such an entity as the matter now making me up. In that case the matter and I must be either one thing or two. This creates an awkward dilemma. If we’re one thing, then I have existed for billions of years and I am human only momentarily. But if we’re two, then my matter would seem to be a second person. Dean Zimmerman and others take the repugnance of these alternatives to show that I’m not a material thing, but rather an immaterial one. This paper explores a way of avoiding the dilemma without giving up materialism: there is no such entity as the matter making me up, but only a lot of particles.

Personal Persistence and Post-Mortem Survival

Harriet E. Baber — 2024-12-31

Can a materialist look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come? Dean Zimmerman’s Falling Elevator Model is a speculative account of how persons, understood as material beings, might survive in a post-mortem resurrected state—a just-so story. It assumes endurantism, the doctrine that persons and other ordinary objects are three-dimensional beings which are wholly present at every time they exist. I argue that neither endurantism, nor purdurantism, according to which persons are four-dimensional ‘worms’ who have proper temporal parts at every time that they exist, provides a plausible account of personal survival. If you want to be a Christian materialist you should embrace exdurantism, the ‘stage theory’, according which persons are instantaneous stages and are not identical to their temporal successors either in this world or in any world to come. Exdurantism provides a plausible account of survival in ordinary cases and extraordinary cases of this-worldly fission, and of post-mortem survival.

Tout le monde ne s’en sortira pas vivant

Yann Schmitt — 2024-12-31

Résumé : Dean Zimmerman défend l’affirmation œcuménique selon laquelle il est possible que toutes les personnes humaines survivent à la mort biologique du corps quelle que soit la théorie plausible de l’identité personnelle adoptée. Dans cet article, je présente certains principes à propos de la survie qui sont pertinents pour n’importe quelle théorie plausible de l’identité personnelle et pertinents pour une survie qui nous intéresserait. Appliqués à certains cas particuliers d’êtres humains, ces principes rendent l’affirmation œcuménique soit fausse, soit difficile à croire rationnellement.

Mots-clés : Dean Zimmerman, Identité personnelle, Survie

Not Everyone Will Get Out Alive:

On Dean Zimmerman's “Personal Identity and the Survival of Death”

Abstract: Dean Zimmerman defends the ecumenical claim that it is possible for all human persons to survive the biological death of the body regardless of the plausible theory of personal identity adopted. In this paper, I present some principles about survival that are relevant to any plausible theory of personal identity and relevant to any survival of interest. When applied to some particular cases of human beings, these principles make the ecumenical claim either false or difficult to believe rationally.

Keywords: Dean Zimmerman, Personal Identity, Survival

Surviving Death, Again

Mark Johnston — 2024-12-31

The paper begins by briefly engaging critically—on theological grounds—with Dean Zimmerman’s defense of Peter van Inwagen’s Christian Materialist idea that we are identical with our bodies, and so survive bodily death by not actually undergoing bodily death. Next, I consider the view of the mind-body relation that Dean himself is tempted by, namely Emergent Substance Dualism, arguing that it is best seen as a fig leaf that at most works to avoid offending contemporary anti-theistic “traducian” sensibilities. In displacing Emergent Substance Dualism, I set out a Neo-Aristotelian account of essence and embodiment that allows for—indeed entails—the possibility of our surviving the death of our bodies. Along the way a characterization of ontological reductionism is given, which avoids the incoherent thought that reduction goes by way of identity. The characterization makes evident why mental events and states are not reducible to physical events. Finally, two non-reductive relations between mental and physical events, namely subserving and implementing, are defined, and then used to characterize the relation of embodiment, and explain how certain mental acts can be “difference-makers” in the physical realm. I only aim to show that given the manifest failure of psycho-physical ontological reduction, this new account of survival adds no further mystery to the mind-body problem.

Fine-Tuning and the Multiverse Argument Against Naturalism

Rad Miksa — 2024-12-31

The multiverse is often invoked by naturalists to avoid a design inference from the fine-tuning of the universe. I argue that positing that we live in a naturalistic multiverse (NM) makes it plausible that we currently exist in a problematic skeptical scenario, though the exact probability that we do is inscrutable. This, in turn, makes agnosticism the rational position to hold concerning the reliability of our reasoning skills, the accuracy of our sensory inputs, and the veracity of our memories. And that means that agnosticism is also the rational position to hold concerning all the beliefs derived from those sources, which includes nearly all of them. Consequently, there is an unacceptable skeptical cost to accepting a NM, thereby requiring a rejection of the NM as a counter to fine-tuning or a rejection of naturalism itself.