Many in the Christian tradition affirm two things: (1) that Jesus Christ descended to Hades/Limbus Patrum on Holy Saturday and (2) that the human nature of Jesus is a hylemorphic compound, the unity of a human soul and prime matter. I argue that (1) and (2) are incompatible; for the name ‘Jesus’, ‘Christ’, and ‘Jesus Christ’ rigidly designates a human being. But, given a certain view of hylemorphism, the human being, Jesus, ceased to exist in the time between his death and resurrection. So, Jesus did not descend to Hades/Limbus Patrum, even if God the Son did.

Michael Tooley has recently advanced a novel formulation of the problem of evil. The argument primarily intends to address sceptical theist responses to the problem of evil by giving a theoretical argument that prima facie evils are probably ultima facie evils. He thus argues from a single prima facie evil to the conclusion that God probably does not exist, before extending his argument to encompass many prima facie evils using Carnapian inductive logic. In this article I respond to Tooley's two arguments. I improve the first by clearing up some ambiguities, before noting a variety of problems. In particular, the fatal problem is that, contra Tooley, the occurrence of some event is in fact evidence that such an event is not in fact impermissible for God to allow. I then challenge Tooley's extension using Carnapian induction, offering a parody which suggests that Carnapian induction of this variety leads to manifestly absurd results.

In this article, I consider how empirical research on religious belief poses a puzzle for the relationship between religious doctrines and lived religion, and develop one solution to that puzzle. The empirical evidence shows that believers are commonly incorrect about the content of doctrinal statements, and apparently not much interested in that content. I argue that this finding calls for a new understanding of the role of doctrinal commitments in religious life. I propose that in many cases believers relate to doctrinal statements in rather the way that they relate to sacred artefacts, that is, by way of an attitude of reverence and strong adherence, and independently of any attempt to discern the content of doctrinal claims. I note how this account avoids some of the difficulties of alternative solutions, which may undermine the claim of religious beliefs to count as genuine beliefs.

Understanding ‘responsibility’ in its normal sense of freely fulfilling a role in a collaborative scheme, rather than as a basic agent integrity or prosocial disposition, I argue that the desirability of responsibility is one of the main supporting and constraining factors in the formation of religious thought and practice, with diversely typical manifestations. For those who are disposed to assume responsibility and to be religious, religious beliefs and practices offer a way of maximally enlarging one's responsibility, an intrinsically appealing prospect. The global relevance of religious responsibility is shown by comparing exemplars in a wide range of cultures. Aeneas, Kongzi, Dharmakara, and Miaoshan each embody maximal responsibility in a distinct way that motivates and sets standards for a religiosity.

Christian scripture provides good reason to think that Christ's redemptive work has cosmic scope (cf. Colossians 1:19–20). Explanations of how Christ's work might extend to all creation (including any sufficiently human-like extraterrestrials) have not, however, received significant sustained attention in theology. In this article, I consider two attempts to explain the cosmic scope of redemption, and after identifying shortcomings with each explanation, I offer a philosophical anthropology (hylemorphic animalism), which when combined with a principle of soteriology due to Gregory of Nazianzus provides a full explanation for how Christ's redemptive work might extend to all creation.

Philosophers have long wondered whether God exists; and yet, they have ignored the question of whether we should hope that He exists – call this stance aspirational theism. In this article, I argue that we have a weighty pro tanto reason to adopt this stance: theism offers a metaphysical guarantee against gratuitous suffering (i.e. God would not permit gratuitous suffering). On the other hand, few atheist alternatives offer such a guarantee – and even then, there are reasons to worry that they are inferior to the theistic alternative. Given this difference, we have a strong pro tanto, but not all-things-considered, reason to adopt aspirational theism.

Sometimes theists wonder how God's beliefs track particular portions of reality, e.g. contingent states of affairs, or facts regarding future free actions. In this article I sketch a general model for how God's beliefs track reality. God's beliefs track reality in much the same way that propositions track reality, namely via grounding. Just as the truth values of true propositions are generally or always grounded in their truthmakers, so too God's true beliefs are grounded in the subject matters of those beliefs (i.e. God believes that p in virtue of the fact that p). This is not idle speculation, since my proposal allows the theist to account for God's true beliefs regarding causally inert portions of reality.

Peter Geach recommended conceiving of God as almighty, not as omnipotent. I argue that Geach's heuristic explanation of almightiness does not provide a workable definition, and I propose one on his behalf. The resulting notion turns out to have precisely those theoretical virtues that Geach advertised: it is immune to the logical puzzles that bedevil omnipotence, and it is better suited to religious contexts than the notion of maximal power that informs typical definitions of omnipotence.

I show how mathematical platonism combined with belief in the God of classical theism can respond to Field's epistemological objection. I defend an account of divine mathematical knowledge by showing that it falls out of an independently motivated general account of divine knowledge. I use this to explain the accuracy of God's mathematical beliefs, which in turn explains the accuracy of our own. My arguments provide good news for theistic platonists, while also shedding new light on Field's influential objection.

On my view, every bone, every fossil, and every putrid whiff of carrion that one smells on a hike in the country is just as good evidence for a divine intervention as it is for the suffering of an animal.