The word ‘sin’ is unlikely to be found in the index of a book on moral philosophy. It belongs to the vocabulary of theology. But the serious student of both subjects is bound to wonder how the concept of sin is to be related to the topics that interest moral philosophers. The problem is complicated by the evident fact that ‘sin’ is what W. B. Gallie has called an ‘essentially contested concept’ and that unanimity is as rare among moral philosophers as it is among theologians. It is not a matter, therefore, of applying an agreed philosophical method to a clearly defined theological concept, but of looking for a way of thinking about sin which is theologically defensible and which can approve itself to a reasonably sympathetic moral philosopher.

Professor Mitchell's strategy for answering the question before us appears to be straightforward. Part, at least, of saying that the concepts of sin and moral wrongdoing belong to different vocabularies is that they are intensionally different. But this does not exclude their being related. Taken as concepts in extension there appear to be five possible relations between sin (S) and moral wrongdoing (M) not all of which Mitchell considers:

What is the relationship between the concept of sin and that of freedom? There is a powerful tradition in European thought linking the idea of moral evil with human freedom. Only with a broadening of consciousness, with the awareness of alternative possibilities, did man become able to choose between good and evil, and was responsible for that choice. The myth of the Fall, it seems, shows that eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil gave man the ability to sin, because the awareness of alternatives allowed man to pursue one rather than the other. Without that freedom thus acquired man was innocent and incapable of moral evil.

In the Christian tradition it has generally been claimed that God, being perfectly good, has the attribute not only of impeccantia (freedom from sin) but also of impeccabilitas (inability to sin). Thus, for example, Aquinas held that ‘God is unable to will anything evil. Hence it is evident that God cannot sin’; and according to the Westminster Confession, ‘God,…being holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin’.

Having clarified certain conceptual matters with regard to God's relation to sin and evil, Professor Brümmer considers the two propositions that God could be the author of any state of affairs that he does not approve of, and that God could approve of any state of affairs which is evil. Brü mmer argues that both these are logically impossible, the first because it would be a sign of weakness in God, and the second because God's will is the ultimate standard of goodness.

I'm very grateful for the opportunity to reply to Paul Helm's perceptive remarks on my paper about divine impeccability, for, in dealing with his criticism, I can further clarify some points in my paper, and in discussing his alternative solution to the problems I raised, I can as yet deal with some important aspects I had ignored. Helm's paper is divided into three sections. The first two contain his criticism of my position, and the third his alternative solution. I will deal with these in turn.

Once upon a time, at an examination for Fellowships at All Souls, there was a three-hour essay paper. When the eager candidates turned over their question-papers, on the reverse they found a blank expanse of whiteness with one little word in the centre for them to write about: the word was ‘SIN’.

The utopian community of Auroville (‘City of Dawn’) is nestled along the Coromandel Coast of India approximately five miles north of Pondicherry. Though conceived as a harmonious society and city modelled after the integrative philosophy of the twentieth-century philosopher-mystic, Aurobindo, Auroville has been from its inception a collection of disparate settlements embodying social fragmentation not unity. The question this essay attempts to answer is how the ‘unitary vision’ which the founder and the charter of Auroville expounded is related to the social and physical disorder that has characterized Auroville from its beginning. Put differently, if it is true that an intentional community's physical space will reflect its philosophical (or theological) model, what are the underlying concepts or images which have produced the current situation in Auroville? In answering such a question, much can be learned about the relationship between religious ideas and symbols and the intentional communities to which they intend to give rise.

Buddhism, and especially early Buddhism, is known for the anātman (no self) teaching. By any account, this teaching is central to both doctrine and practice from the beginning. Zen Buddhism (Chinese Ch'an), in contrast, is known for its teaching that the single most important thing in life is to discover the ‘true self’. Is there a real, or only an apparent, conflict between these two versions of Buddhism? Certainly there is at the least a radical change in the linguistic formulation of the teaching. Examining the two teachings on the linguistic level, we note that the use of the term ‘true’ in the phrase ‘true self’ may indicate that we have here a conscious reformation of the place of the term ‘self’ in the tradition, or perhaps that the use of this phrase in Zen is the product of such a conscious formulation. Thus we may expect, upon investigation, to find an evolution from one teaching to the other, rather than a true doctrinal disparity. The apparent, or linguistic, conflict between the two, however, remains; hence we must also expect to find a doctrinal formulation at some point in this evolution in which the apparent conflict is consciously apprehended and resolved.

Reflection on religion has, in the modern era, been intimidated by the conclusions and the (alleged) methods of science. The latter have been by far the most threatening, since they challenge not simply the conclusions but the possibility of theology. Happily, the philosophy of science has recently developed models of understanding which can be applied less destructively to other modes of thought. Yet the pattern persists: philosophers of religion and theologians receive these as they might receive new revelations from the deity (or, I suppose one must say, as they no longer would receive such revelations).

A few years ago I ran across a statement by Jean-Paul Sartre which seemed to imply that if there is a God, then there can be no human freedom. That thesis struck me as questionable, but at the time I did not pause to examine it. More recently I ran across a similar, more explicit statement by Kurt Baier, and I decided the time to pause had come. My knee-jerk response to Baier – and I confess it was probably nothing more – was, ‘Why can't there be human freedom if there is a God? Indeed, can there be human freedom if there isn't a God ?’ The second of these questions has proved to be the more provocative to me, for the more I have thought about it, the more it has seemed to me that it is the atheist and not the theist who should be on the defensive about libertarianism, i.e. the position that human beings do act, that human actions are not determined, that we are the sole cause of our actions, and that all things remaining the same, we could have done otherwise. Indeed, the more I thought about that question – Can there be human freedom if there is no God? – the more convinced I became (and still am) that the atheist has no good reason for believing in libertarianism. Note: I am not saying that atheism is logically incompatible with libertarianism. Perhaps it is, but if it is, that is not yet obvious to me. Rather, I am saying that an atheist who believes in libertarianism must believe in it on the basis of faith and must hold this faith in opposition to the only type of evidence that is available to him. Hence, by denying the existence of God, Baier and Sartre do not make room for human freedom; they make belief in human freedom irrational. By contrast, I shall argue, the theist does have a good reason for believing that humans are free. Let's take separate looks at Baier and Sartre; then I shall summarize the substance of my position.

Professor Wainwright's recent book is the first attempt at a systematic and rigorous assessment of mystical experience since the publication of W. T. Stace's influential Mysticism and Philosophy more than twenty years ago. It is also the first work in English during the period of the critical study of mystical experience inaugurated by Richard M. Bucke and William James at the beginning of this century to adequately formulate and extensively discuss the philosophical problems involved in assessing the cognitive value of mystical experience. Wainwright's conclusions are not unproblematic, but the publication of his work does provide an ideal opportunity for a review of the central problems associated with the assessment of mystical experience. In this paper, therefore, we wish to delineate and discuss the two major areas of difficulty, and to extend and amend some of Wainwright's suggestions in these areas.