There is a familiar argument based on the principle that the past is fixed that, if God foreknows what I will do, I do not have the power to act otherwise. So, there is a problem about reconciling divine omniscience with the power to do otherwise. However the problem posed by the argument does not provide a good reason for adopting the view that God is outside time. In particular, arguments for the fixity of the past, if successful, either establish His timelessness independently of the problem, or mean that the problem could not be solved by adopting the view that He is timeless.

A question that has been largely overlooked by philosophers of religion is how God would be able to effect a rational choice between two worlds of unsurpassable goodness. To answer this question, I draw a parallel with the paradigm cases of indifferent choice, including Buridan's ass, and argue that such cases can be satisfactorily resolved provided that the protagonists employ what Otto Neurath calls an ‘auxiliary motive’. I supply rational grounds for the employment of such a motive, and then argue against the views of Leibniz and Nicholas Rescher to show that this solution would also work for God.

Plausibly, if an object persists through time, then its later existence must be caused by its earlier existence. Many theists endorse a theory of continuous creation, according to which God is the sole cause of a creature's existence at a given time. The conjunction of these two theses rather unfortunately implies that no object distinct from God persists at all. What strategies for resolving this difficulty are available?

According to the much-discussed argument from divine hiddenness, God's existence is disconfirmed by the fact that not everyone believes in God. The argument has provoked an impressive range of theistic replies, but none has overcome – or, I suggest, could overcome – the challenge posed by the uneven distribution of theistic belief around the world, a phenomenon for which naturalistic explanations seem more promising. The ‘demographics of theism’ confound any explanation of why non-belief is always blameworthy or of why God allows blameless non-belief. They also cast doubt on the existence of a sensus divinitatis: the awareness of God that Reformed epistemologists claim is innate in all normal human beings. Finally, the demographics make the argument from divine hiddenness in some ways a better atheological argument than the more familiar argument from evil.

This paper argues that John Hick's commitment to the moral principle of altruism undermines his pluralistic claim that all of the major world religions are equally efficacious from a soteriological perspective. This argument is placed in a context of a discussion evaluating the theoretical virtues of various hypotheses about religious diversity.

I argue that Meeker is mistaken in two crucial respects. First, contrary to both myself and Plantinga, he treats exclusivism as a theory about the relation between the religions, and then claims that it is superior to the pluralist theory. But he does not say what his exclusivist theory is. Second, he bases his claim of a fundamental self-contradiction in my pluralist position on a view which I disavow, namely that altruism is the core of religion. He omits the central idea of a profound reorientation in response to the Real, of which altruism is a manifestation.

In this paper I argue that the denial of middle knowledge and emphasis on human freedom characteristic of open theism makes the traditional concept of hell even more morally problematic than it would otherwise be. But these same features of open theism present serious difficulties for the view that all will necessarily be saved. I conclude by arguing that the most promising approach for open theists is to adopt a version of contingent, as opposed to necessary, universalism.

Jacob Boehme, the seventeenth-century mystical philosopher, had a significant influence upon Paul Tillich. In this article I offer a reassessment of the relationship between these two thinkers by arguing for an orthodox interpretation of Boehme's doctrine of God that links him more closely with Tillich than recent commentators have suggested. Specifically, I show how Boehme and Tillich stand united against the heterodox Hegel in their presentation of a dynamic process of divinity's self-differentiation and reconciliation that completes itself apart from history rather than within history. This move, I conclude, keeps Boehme and Tillich squarely within the realm of Christian orthodoxy.