In a series of articles in this journal, Wes Morriston has launched what can only be considered a full-scale assault on the divine command theory (DCT) of morality. According to Morriston, proponents of this theory are committed to an alarming counterpossible: that if God did command an annual human sacrifice, it would be morally obligatory. Since only a ‘terrible’ deity would do such a ‘terrible’ thing, we should reject DCT. Indeed, if there were such a deity, the world would be a terrible place – certainly far worse than it is. We argue that Morriston's non-standard method for assessing counterpossibles of this sort is flawed. Not only is the savvy DCT-ist at liberty to reject it, but Morriston's method badly misfires in the face of theistic activism – a metaphysical platform available to DCT-ists, according to which if God didn't exist, neither would anything else.

Philosophers often read ‘The will to believe’ as defending the substitution of non-epistemic reasons for inadequate epistemic reasons. I contend that a more charitable reading of James's argument is to understand him as proposing a contextualist account of the kind of evidence needed for responsible believing. On my reading, James claims that evidential support that might be insufficient in a purely theoretical context may be good enough when there is a pressing need to decide on a course of action.

In his article ‘Nietzsche, Tristan, and the rehabilitation of erotic distance’ Joseph D. Kuzma identifies two seemingly opposed erotic ideals in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. He claims that Nietzsche applauded the first and sought to dispense with the second, and that this was his solution to the problem of nihilism. I argue that this ‘solution’ is as ill-defined as the ideals it involves, and that it either consigns us to hell or offers a terminological variant upon theism. I rescue Schopenhauer from some familiar charges and make a link with Simone Weil's reflections upon love's impossibility.

In rejecting Plantinga's ‘reformed epistemology’, Jeremy Koons has argued that no beliefs are epistemically basic, since even perceptual beliefs arise from observations that are theory-dependent. But even if all observations are theory-dependent, not all theories are alike. Beliefs that are dependent on uncontroversial bodies of theory may be ‘basic’ in the sense that they play a foundational role in the acquisition of knowledge. There is, however, another problem with reformed epistemology. It is that even if Christian beliefs were basic in this sense, they could face evidential challenge, for the epistemic status of a ‘basic’ belief depends, in part, on its probabilistic or explanatory relations to our other beliefs. It follows that Christian faith remains vulnerable to evidential arguments, such as Paul Draper's argument from evil.

I articulate a real presence theory of the Eucharist that is coherent, attractive, and utilizes the resources of contemporary Christology. First, I review some of the recent analytic discussions of the metaphysics of the incarnation. From this, I distinguish two types of impanation, which I name Type-H and Type-S Impanation. I then expound Type-S Impanation utilizing the notion of enabling externalism. I raise two potential objections to this view, the responses to which allow me to highlight the incarnation-like coherence and attractiveness of this view as an exposition of the liturgical utterance ‘This is my body.’

Sceptical theists attempt to block the evidential argument from evil by arguing that a key premise of that argument – that gratuitous evil exists – cannot reasonably be maintained. They argue that, for all we know, our knowledge of reasons God may have to permit such evil is radically incomplete. Thus the fact that we cannot identify reasons for God to permit the evil we observe does not allow us reasonably to conclude that no such reasons exist. In response, Erik Wielenberg has pointed out what appears to be, for many sceptical theists, an unfortunate further consequence of their position. According to Wielenberg, if sceptical theism is correct, then, similarly, the fact that we cannot identify reasons why God would lie to us does not allow us reasonably to conclude no such reasons exist. But then, for all we know, God's word constitutes not a divine revelation but a divine lie. This article examines sceptical theist responses to Wielenberg's argument to date (from Segal, and McBrayer and Swenson) and develops two new Wielenberg-style arguments for the same conclusion.

Taking the good (generosity), the true (enquiry), and the beautiful (creativity) as exemplars of what can make a life noticeably meaningful, elsewhere I have advanced a principle that entails and plausibly explains all three. Specifically, I have proffered the view that great meaning in life, at least in so far as it comes from this triad, is a matter of positively orienting one's rational nature towards fundamental conditions of human existence, conditions of human life responsible for much else about it. Iddo Landau has raised important objections to this principle, arguing in particular that contouring one's rationality towards fundamentality is neither necessary nor sufficient for great meaning in life. In this article, I reply to Landau's objections to the fundamentality account of what makes life very meaningful. I thereby aim to enrich reflection about what it is about the lives of Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, and Pablo Picasso that made them so significant as well as to indicate how fundamentality implicitly plays a key role in theistic conceptions of meaning in life.