Philosophy Compass is a unique philosophy journal which only publishes survey articles, pieces which aim to summarize recent work. Its aim, as editor Brian Weatherson explains, is to enable people to keep up with a vast, overspecialized, fast-moving, and only somewhat accessible world of philosophical research.
What’s more exciting – they sell the pdfs of the [...]
In a well-argued recent guest post and follow up comment, Greg Spendlove argued that for all we know, there could be a property (feature) which is also a person / self / personal being.
As I explain in my comments there, I’m not convinced - I think we’re on firm ground to deny the alleged possibility, [...]
Below is a guest post by Greg Spendlove, who is an adjunct philosophy instructor at Salt Lake Community College. He received his Master of Arts in Christian Thought with an emphasis in Systematic Theology and a cognate in Philosophy of Religion from Trinity International University in Deerfield, IL in 2005. His Master’s thesis was entitled [...]
Now, for a quick break in our Richard of St. Victor series, so that I can explain the point of my implausible yarn about a gnome. Tertullian, Irenaeus, and other late-2nd and early 3rd century catholic thinkers subscribed to what we can all the Logos theory. This christological theory has three main elements:
God’s internal Word (logos) [...]
Note: this review originally appeared in Religious Studies Review.
FAITH LACKING UNDERSTANDING: THEOLOGY ‘THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY’. By Randal Rauser. Colorado Springs, CO: Paternoster, 2008.
This rausing little book is a work of popular philosophical theology which exhibits uncommon intellectual honesty, courage, humor, clarity, and insight. Each chapter but the first is devoted to a doctrine of [...]
Philosophical theologian Randal Rauser has been blogging as the Tentative Apologist. This year, for Christmas, he says he’s hoping for “a coherent account of the incarnation“. In other words, he wants a way of understanding the incarnation doctrine which is apparently consistent. Will he get it? Word has it that the elves are working overtime [...]
Kudos to the team at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for
their recent radical re-design, done by Josh D. May. Notable improvements include a nice print-friendly page feature, and the entries sorted by topic. Here are the Philosophy of Religion ones.
their new entry “Incarnation”, by University of Wisconsin Madison PhD David Werther, who teaches in their [...]
Little known fact: overwork causes one’s neck to become invisible!
After an embarrassing amount of time, I’ve finally finished my encyclopedia entry on the Trinity for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (as well as lengthy supplementary documents on the history of Trinity doctrines, Judaic and Islamic objections, and unitarianism).
Since I can’t thank them in the entry, [...]
10 parts in the series so far… but how many points?
Time to wrap up this long in the tooth series with a summary, and a few extra thoughts along the way. In parts one and two, we laid out simple arguments that Christ is divine, or that he is the one God. Careful examination of [...]
Nothing is appropriately worshipped except God.
Jesus is appropriately worshipped.
Therefore, Jesus is God.
This argument is valid. But is it also sound?
It may depend on what is meant by the term “worship”. It seems to me that many contemporary Christian philosophers and theologians understand “worship” in a way that makes 1 true by definition.
Is Jesus addressed or described as “god” or “God” (Greek: theos) in the New Testament? Yes. But quite a bit less often than you might think. Theologian Murray Harris wrote a whole book about this, pictured above.
I don’t endorse this as a particularly good book – Harris, like many a theologian, mixes linguistic sophistication and [...]
What does it mean to say that this dude is a god (or is divine)?
In this series, we first set out an important argument from Christian theology and apologetics about Jesus. In the second installment, we simplified the argument in two ways, and pointed out that to have valid argument, we need to avoid equivocal [...]
Don’t just say ‘Jesus’, smartypants.
This series is about a guy, Jesus, and a word, “god”. Consider this argument:
1. Jesus is divine.
2. There is only one god.
3. Therefore, Jesus is the one god.
This argument, as it stands, is invalid. But, not to worry
“This is some writing about that which nothing can be written about. Pretty cool, huh?”
I’ve been reading Gregory of Nazianzus lately, his famous Theological Orations (c. 380 CE), wherein he expounds and defends what scholars call the pro-Nicene consensus about the Trinity – a viewpoint which developed in the latter half of the 4th c. [...]
This brings the total of R’s to 6.
Wish I could say there weren’t more coming!
We’ve looked so far at two ways Christians may respond to apparently contradictory doctrines: Redirection and Restraint. We now move on to a third strategy: Resolution. In brief, the Resolver holds that the apparent contradiction can be banished, made to disappear. [...]
Half empty?
“Kenotic” christology is an approach deriving from the 19th century which emphasizes that God voluntarily “emptied” himself of something (attributes, glory, functions) in becoming incarnate. It has been seen as orthodox, but at the same time a better alternative to the traditional accounts. Recently a book of essays on kenosis theory has [...]
Time to close out this long series with a brief summary of my own observations on and objections to Trinity Monotheism. These aren’t all the one’s I’ve mentioned, but only the ones I think are the most relevant. And I should say that Joseph has raised some others as well, both in his guest post [...]
In what sense, according to Craig and Moreland, are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each “divine”?
Well, consider Rover.
Sometimes, all your main interests converge. Books? Check. Computers? Check. Philosophy and theology? Check. History? Check. The result: http://trinities.org/books.
Before going into objections to “Trinity Monotheism”, I thought it’d be a good idea to say a bit more about their long, meaty chapter in which they (eventually) set out their own theory, in this book. This’ll take a couple of posts, and we’ll allow time for discussion between them. Theologians in particular should find [...]
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