Divine conceptualism takes all abstract objects to be propositions in the mind of God. I focus here on necessary propositions and contemporary claims that the laws of logic, understood as necessarily true propositions, provide us with an epistemic bridge to theological predication—specifically, to the claim that God exists. I argue that when contemporary versions of DC say ‘G/god’ they merely rename the notion of necessary truth, and fail to refer to God. Given that God is incomprehensible, epistemic access to the (...) state of propositions in the mind of God is extremely limited. (shrink)

Brannon Ellis’s book Calvin, Classical Trinitarianism, and the Aseity of the Son is a detailed historical theological study of Calvin’s defense of the doctrine of the self-existence of the person of the Son. The text emphasizes and endorses Calvin’s defense of the necessity and authority of special revelation and the biblical credentials of a distinction between two ways of speaking of God: nonrelatively as to the divine essence, and relatively as to the persons. With these commitments in mind, Calvin’s defense (...) of the aseity of the Son brings the full authority of Trinitarian confession to bear on philosophical theology and implicates at a methodological level the rationalistic tendencies of Thomistic natural theology and perfect being theology. (shrink)

This article seeks to recover a familiar but unappreciated female voice from English Puritanism of the seventeenth century, that of Margaret Baxter. Various challenges to such recovery are examined, most notably the nature of her relationship to her pastor and husband, Richard. Extant literature from Margaret’s hand focuses on the events surrounding her conversion and life-threatening illness shortly thereafter. The present analysis of these texts and their circumstances concludes that Margaret was a faithful but critical heir of the practical theology (...) of her day, and that in her lived expression of that tradition one observes the enduring scars of the trauma of her conversion. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 61 Heft: 3 Seiten: 333-353.

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 59 Heft: 1 Seiten: 245-264.

Against the individualism and abstractionism of standard modern accounts of justification and epistemic merit, Wolterstorff incorporates the ethics of belief within the full scope of a person's socio-moral accountability, an accountability that ultimately flows from the teleology of the world as intended by its creator and from the inherent value of humans as bearers of the divine image. This study explores Nicholas Wolterstorff's theory of "situated rationality" from a theological point of view and argues that it is in fact a (...) doxastic ethic based upon the theology of Wolterstorff's neo-Calvinist, Kuyperian background, which emerges in terms of his biblical ethic and eschatology of shalom. Situated rationality, the sum of Wolterstorff's decades-long work on epistemology and rationality is a shalom doxastic ethic--a Christian, common grace ethic of doxastic (even religious doxastic) pluralism. (shrink)