It seems that animal pain is an obstacle to belief in a good God, though Christianity has not been much concerned with the issue. A systemic approach to pain is not a complete answer, nor is there any merit in denying that God is subject to moral appraisal. Marilyn McCord Adams recommends that such investigations be located in the specifics of a religious tradition. Her advice eliminates a couple of radical solutions but there appear to be a number of ways (...) in which progress might be made without doing violence to the tradition that is in need of a theodicy. (shrink)

If the theological virtues are supernatural they must be said to be in some sense not natural. This suggests the possibility that they are not only not natural but positively unnatural, in that they postulate either an inhumanly high level of achievement or a divine takeover of human life. The solution proposed draws on Peter Forrest’s work inGod Without the Supernatural: A Defence of Scientific Theism, and suggests a naturalistic account of the virtues in question.

I identify the objectionable element in theocracy, not with reliance on God as such, nor with the idea that God might have something to do with morality, but with the anti-human propensity to issue orders without communicating good reasons for them. In medieval discussion prohibitions not based on good reasons attracted the labelmalum quia prohibitum, bad because forbidden and I take this to be the criterion of theocracy in its objectionable form. I examine, in part of the Vatican’s doctrine against (...) contraception, a persistent tendency towards this approach, a tendency incompatible with the tradition of the Church and ultimately incompatible even with the thirteenth century discussion of such issues in the work of Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

In this obituary, I detail the life and contribution of William Kevin Presa.