Is the term ‘religion’ otiose or misleading? Is what is commonly understood to be religion the enemy of faith? Can the study of religion be upheld as a discipline of academic respectability? The interrelation of these questions is close, and not without complexity.

I find myself in serious difficulties over Professor Løgstrup's paper. There are many points on which I am far from confident that I have understood him, and on the points where I am confident I have understood him that confidence may well prove to be misplaced. What I shall try to do in these comments is to provide in my own words an account of what I think is the argument of Professor Løgstrup's paper; then I shall try to say why I think that that argument is unconvincing. Finally I shall try to say something about the kind of programme that Professor Løgstrup sets himself, and the sort of programme that is in my view incumbent on a Christian philosopher of religion.

In that ‘Cock and Bull’ story, Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne satirises philosophic disputation. Since the subject is a nose, the philosophers, divided already along Catholic and Lutheran lines, become Nosarians and Anti-nosarians. The doctors belong to the two universities of Strasburg. On ‘which side of the nose [would] the two universities split’?

'Tis above reason, cried the doctors on one side.

'Tis below reason, cried the others.

'Tis faith, we cried.

'Tis a fiddle-stick, said the other.

'Tis possible, cried the one.

'Tis impossible, said the other.

God's power is infinite, cried the Nosarians, he can do anything.

He can do nothing, cried the Antinosarians, which implies contradictions.

He can make matter think, said the Nosarians.

As certainly as you can make a velvet cap out of a sow's ear, replied the Antinosarians.

In ‘God, evil, and occasionalism’ Matthew Shea and C.P. Ragland appeal to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing to argue against Alvin Plantinga that occasionalism is morally worse than conservationism. In this article I critically examine their argument and conclude that it fails because it contains an equivocation or is unwarranted. I also offer a case against their position by, first, arguing that on none of three prominent accounts of doing and allowing God merely allows suffering.

Second, I develop the ‘Epistemological-Equivalence Argument’ in order to show that even if we grant such a distinction for God's acts, they would be morally on a par.

Once upon a time, at an examination for Fellowships at All Souls, there was a three-hour essay paper. When the eager candidates turned over their question-papers, on the reverse they found a blank expanse of whiteness with one little word in the centre for them to write about: the word was ‘SIN’.

It is often objected to the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead that if we reject dualism and disembodied existence there is no way even for God to bring it about that a resurrected person is identical with his or her supposed original, rather than just a duplicate. My response is that if God intended all along that people should have two periods of existence, the problem vanishes. In a Test Match, there are long periods when the ground and stands are empty and no play takes place, yet no-one says that the resumed game may only be a duplicate of that of the previous day. The same holds for a resurrection intended from the beginning.

Though Kierkegaard's writings are rarely referenced in discussions of the problem of hell, the choice model of hell, I argue, can be strengthened by a close reading of the relevant passages of The Sickness unto Death that bear on the topic of damnation. Each of the two major forms of the choice model that are discussed in the contemporary philosophical literature are anticipated and developed in masterful psychological detail in this key Kierkegaardian text. The first form of the choice model, which sees damnation as the explicit and direct object of choice of those who are finally lost, faces the challenge of explaining motive: why would anyone freely choose eternal damnation? The second form, in which damnation is the natural consequence of certain free choices but not that which is chosen directly, faces the significant challenge of explaining why God does not annihilate the damned, mercifully putting them out of their misery. I argue that The Sickness unto Death contains conceptual resources for meeting both of these challenges.

The main purpose of this paper is to bring out some significant humanistic characteristics of Chinese religious thought. My account is limited to what is originally and typically Chinese. That is to say, it will exclude what has been influenced by Buddhism from India or Christianity from the Western world. Some of the theses of this paper are based on scholarly works, while others are drawn from the author's primary experience.

I defend a relative identity solution to the identity puzzle posed by the doctrine of the Trinity. It has been argued that relative identity theories which admit absolute identity, such as the account proposed here, do not succeed in saving the doctrine of the Trinity from logical incoherence. I show that this argument fails. Relative identity theories that admit absolute identity are logically conservative, metaphysically innocent, and unproblematic. And, given the account I propose we can, without incurring any logical or metaphysical costs, hold that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same being but not the same trinitarian person.

Eleonore Stump's solution to the problem of suffering fails to show how God could be justified in permitting persons to suffer the dark night of the soul. In this article, I explain why and offer an amendment. I contend that a person who responds to the dark night in the right way experiences positive feedback between suffering and charity. This feedback not only enables the sufferer ultimately to attain his heart's desire but also explains why God is justified in permitting persons to suffer the dark night.

In her recent book Atonement, Eleonore Stump objects to the Anselmian theory of atonement, claiming it is not consistent with God's love. I argue that her objection mischaracterizes Anselmian theories. First, Stump equivocates on the concept of forgiveness, conflating personal forgiveness with divine pardon, and second, Stump misrepresents the God of Anselm as unwilling to reconcile with sinners prior to receiving satisfaction. I suggest that Stump's real objection should be to the Anselmian view of divine justice as retributive, not to his conception of divine love. I suggest a model of an all-loving God acting as a retributive judge.

‘A book’, says Lichtenberg, ‘is a mirror. If an ape looks into it, then obviously what looks back out is not an apostle.’ It may be hoped that these reflections on looking into Dr Robinson's book on Christology will not entirely obscure either the sound points he frequently makes in criticism of traditional Christology, or still less, the good intentions that have led him to write his book. I shall simply be trying to point the way towards how God's human face might possibly be revealed still more clearly in Jesus than it is in Dr Robinson's Christ.

Adams (1993) argues that the traditional view that no one in Hell can leave, poses a problem for the theist. This is because, she argues, such a bad state of affairs should be prevented by God. In response, Buckareff and Plug (2005) argue that everyone in Hell can leave. More recently, Matheson (2014) argues that if everyone in Hell can leave, then everyone in Heaven can also leave. However, Matheson provides reason to think that it is impossible for anyone in Heaven to leave. In which case, he argues, no one in Hell can leave either. In this article, I extend this debate, and offer reason to think Matheson's argument is unsound.

I offer a new approach to the old question of the epistemic value of religious experience. According to this approach, religious experience is a species of desire, desire in this context involving a kind of experience which is cognitive and unmediated. The account is inspired by Levinas and Heidegger, and it involves a conception of experience which is shared by a disjunctivist account of perception. Perceptual disjunctivism is my starting point, and it provides the ground for the ensuing discussion of desire. In the final section of the article I argue that the parallel between perceptual disjunctivism and a Levinasian conception of desire points to a further strength in the account of desire here presented, namely, by suggesting the possibility of a disjunctive style response to scepticism about religious experience.

That is the short title. The long title is: ‘How a deterministic interpretation of quantum theory would, if correct, show that compatibilism is not true; and some implications of this for theodicy’.

Let us start with what people think they mean by freedom who, like myself, reject both determinism and compatibilism. Freedom-fans, we might call them. Better, let us start with what they do not mean, since proponents of determinism too frequently saddle them with views they do not hold. Freedom-fans do not doubt causality.

The classical pragmatists were as concerned as any of their modern philosophical predecessors that the moral and religious aspects of human life not be swamped by the successes of the physical sciences. It was John Dewey, after all, who said that

The problem of restoring integration and cooperation between man's beliefs about the world in which he lives and his beliefs about the values and purposes that should direct his conduct is the deepest problem of modern life. It is the problem of any philosophy that is not isolated from that life.