Over the centuries, Christians have used the word faith in many different ways. From the texts of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament up through statements of conciliar councils and theologians, there have been numerous understandings of what faith is and how it comes about. Is faith a kind of knowledge, the “evidence” of things hoped for, as St. Paul says? Or is it a kind of trust – in the Bible, the teachings of a church, or in God?... Read more
The Australian philosopher John Leslie Mackie’s 1955 article, “Evil and Omnipotence,” is widely considered one of the most forceful articulations of what is now known as the Logical Problem of Evil (LPE). It’s often said that the LPE is no longer considered a valid argument. It supposedly has succumbed to purely logical objections raised by the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga in the 1970s – which we will look at in a moment. In its purest force, the LPE is as... Read more
William F. Vallicella has an interesting post on his blog Philosophy in Progress on “mortalism,” the doctrine that when the body dies the “soul” or mind dies as well. As I’ve written elsewhere, sometimes Mortalism goes by the name of animalism, that we are simply animals and therefore when our bodies die so does whatever it is within us that makes us “us.” Vallicella refers to the work of the former Jesuit turned atheist apologist Peter Heinegg, who died in... Read more
I have to admit, the brouhaha over Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline makes me crazy. That’s because some of us have been warning about it almost from the day he took office. In June 2021, just six months after his inauguration, I wrote this: “Joe Biden is ostensibly the president, yet he continues to show signs of cognitive impairment – despite the controlled media insistence that all is well and there is nothing to see here. “A politician for more... Read more
In the simplest of terms, there are basically two schools of thought involving resurrection among contemporary philosophers of religion. Each of these schools seek to explain how bodily resurrection might be possible, and the proposals that each school presents come with numerous logical problems that are difficult to resolve. The school closest to what most Christians have believed over the centuries affirms what is called substance dualism, the belief that there are two basic substances in the universe, physical substances... Read more
What actually is the afterlife? In Adolf von Harnack’s magisterial summary of early Christianity, translated into English as What is Christianity, he claims that the distinctive teaching that sets Christianity apart from all other world religions is its strange belief in physical life after death. From the earliest records we have of the Jesus movement, what struck ancient people the most about the followers of the executed Jewish messiah was their fearlessness in the face of death. Roman writers noted that... Read more
Welcome to the inaugural post of Disputed Questions on Patheos! If you’ve ever wondered if God exists… or how we can know that the events described in the New Testament actually happened… or what possible evidence there could be for life after death… then this is the place for you. We explore the key philosophical questions that underlie religious belief, ethics, politics, even sports (Yes, there are philosophical disputes in sports!) I’ve been writing this column for many years, on... Read more
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