In The Existence of God (1979), Richard Swinburne gave formal expression to his utilization of the cumulative case argument and his application of the probability calculus to the theistic arguments. It is generally agreed, I believe, that this work is meticulous in detail and rigorously argued; it is also, I believe, generally agreed that the conclusion is disappointingly bland – particularly in light of the high-powered apparatus brought to bear on the question of God's existence. It is my intent to show that, perhaps, those disappointed by Swinburne's conclusion were justified in so feeling and that a stronger conclusion follows directly from Swinburne's own arguments and methodologies. Let me state at the outset, however, that this paper is not intended to be either an endorsement or a rejection of cumulative case arguments in general or of the employment of the probability calculus in such applications as the question of God's existence. Rather, I merely seek to assess Swinburne's conclusions on the grounds he lays out in The Existence of God.

The doctrine of hell has always been troublesome for philosophical theology and has particularly captured the attention of philosophers in the past decade. Those contemporary philosophers who defend the doctrine of hell inevitably argue that it is the result of free choice on the part of the damned. Richard Swinburne in his ‘Theodicy of Heaven and Hell’ says that ‘It is good that God should not let a man damn himself without much urging and giving him many opportunities to change his mind, but it is bad that someone should not in the all-important matter of the destiny of his soul be allowed finally to destroy it.’ William Lane Craig believes that hell is consistent with God's justice and love since ‘Those who make a well-informed and free decision to reject Christ are self-condemned ... By spurning God's prevenient grace and the solicitation of His Spirit, they shut out God's mercy and seal their own destiny.’ Similar passages could be culled from the recent books of Jerry Walls and Jonathan Kvanvig.

Disregarding variations in approach, the strategy common to these philosophers is to argue that hell is neither unjust nor unloving if it is freely chosen by the damned. Such a strategy is moot if it turns out that no one can choose hell. In a much discussed passage, Thomas Talbott denies that the notion of freely choosing hell is coherent. I will first examine Talbott's argument in an attempt to understand it. Then I will show how the published responses to Talbott fail to strike at the heart of the argument. Finally I will present my own defence of hell, based on two strands in early church theodicy.

The free will defence attempts to show that belief in an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God may be rational, despite the existence of evil. At the heart of the free will defence is the claim that it may be impossible, even for an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God, to bring about certain goods without the accompanying inevitability, or at least overwhelming probability, of evil. The good in question is the existence of free agents, in particular, agents who are sometimes free with respect to morally significant actions and who are thereby responsible, at least in part, for those actions and the personal character which is a function of and exhibited in those actions. The free will defender contends that if an agent is to be truly responsible for her actions, then she must be free to bring about both good and evil, and God cannot be blamed if such agents choose to bring about the latter rather than the former.

I have argued that since (i) intentional agency requires intention-acquisition, (ii) intention-acquisition implies a sense of an open future, and (iii) a sense of an open future is incompatible with complete foreknowledge, then (iv) no agent can be omniscient. Alternatively, an omniscient being is omni-impotent. David Hunt continues to oppose this reasoning, most recently, in Religious Studies 32 (March 1996). It is increasingly clear that the debate turns on larger issues concerning necessity and knowledge, but let me here offer a few comments in defence of my position.

Everyone will die. Death is your fate, whatever your virtues or vices, whatever your hopes, whatever good or evil deeds you might otherwise have committed. Although millions died in Nazi and Stalinist concentration camps, some escaped death – but only temporarily. For in the world at large billions have died and will die, and no one will forever escape the grave.

Iris Murdoch's concept of Good is a central feature of her moral theory; in Murdoch's thought, attention to the Good is the primary means of improving our moral conduct. Unfortunately, her unsystematic presentation of her ideas and the difficulty of the issues being considered make it hard to be sure what she means by the Good, and how we are to attend to it. I will argue that this uncertainty has given rise to three objections which, with some clarification and development of Murdoch's view, are by no means fatal to her position.

A. A. Howsepian argued in a recent article in this publication that Mormons are atheists. It is the purpose of this article to respond to Howsepian by showing: (1) Howsepian has oversimplified Mormon thought in general and the views of individual Mormons in particular to the point of distortion and caricature; (2) Howsepian has not accurately assessed the options available to Mormons; (3) a central argument in Howsepian's approach falls victim to the basic logical fallacy of composition; and (4) the Anselmian criterion that any being that can count as God necessarily must be the greatest conceivable being (the ‘GCB criterion’) should either be modified or understood in a sense that allows for potentiality within God; and (5) Mormon beliefs can satisfy the GCB criterion if modified to provide that the GCB must be unsurpassable by any being distinct from God but may be self-surpassable in some respects.

Divine passibility refers to the hypothesis that God feels the suffering and joy of the world. Passibility implies that God not only knows all propositions that are true of the world (if such a list is logically possible) but that God subjectively experiences, either partially or entirely, what is experienced within the world. The question of God's passibility is related to a surprising number of areas important to contemporary theology. For example, omniscience is thought to be impossible unless passibility is assumed, for to know something fully implies a certain level of experiential knowledge. But it seems that any being open to experience would also have to be passible, or so it is argued. Additionally, the precise character of God's passibility or impassibility has ramifications for issues in Christology and theodicy. Not surprisingly, therefore, the question of whether or not God is immanently involved with the processes of a changing world has become a matter of great debate in this century. Recently Charles Hartshorne (1984 relying on 1941, 1948), Marcel Sarot (1992, 1995), Paul Fiddes (1988), Charles Taliaferro (1989) and George Shields (1992) have argued that God does in fact feel, either emotionally or physically, the vicissitudes, happiness and anguish of the world. Others, such as Richard Creel (1986) and Paul Helm (1988, 1990) argue that God cannot possibly be implicated in or, even worse, identified with a created, contingent and imperfect world. Although the question of whether or not God is passible relates to important aspects of God's nature such as omniscience, omnipresence and immutability, this paper will focus on the question of whether divine passibility is metaphysically possible.