A number of years ago, James Rachels presented an argument for the necessary non–existence of God. It was based upon a supposed inconsistency between worship and what might be called ‘autonomous moral agency’. In Rachels' view, one person's being the worshipper of another is partially determined by the way in which it is appropriate for the first to respond to the commands of the second. In brief, a worshipper's obedience to commands should be ‘ unqualified ’. Rachels thought that there was some kind of incoherence in the requirement that an autonomous moral agent respond to commands in this way. He concluded that there could be no being who, like God, was alleged necessarily to be a fitting object of worship.

In his recent work Professor Morris writes: ‘I am suggesting that, armed with a couple of fairly simple metaphysical distinctions we can begin to see how the doctrine of the Incarnation can possibly be true.’

What are these ‘metaphysical distinctions’ and do they stand up to critical examination? My answer to the latter part of this question in regard to the first distinction is a reserved ‘Yes’; in regard to the second distinction a definite ‘No’. If my criticism of the second distinction holds good, then Morris's defence of the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation fails, for his defence crucially relies on the validity of that distinction.

According to the Law of Non–Contradiction, no statement and its negation are jointly true. According to many critics, Christians cannot serve both the orthodox faith and the Law of Non–Contradiction: if they hold to the one they must despise the other. And according to an impressive number of these critics, Christians who cling to the traditional doctrine of the Trinity must despise the Law of Non–Contradiction. Augustine's statement of this doctrine poses the problem as poignantly as any.

The idea or indeed the possibility of self–change is rarely discussed in general terms, though many religious aims relate to it. I wish to introduce aset of concepts relevant to the understanding of the idea; and to exhibit the Buddhist path, as described in the Pali texts, as an example of radical self–change. The general concepts and the particular example will have muchto do with the senses in which, when a person acts or intends, the action or intention is truly his; and so will involve an examination of the notion of self–control.

It has often been suggested – recently again by Michael Goulder in a debate with John Hick – that what traditionally was called the problem of ‘particular providence’, the problem of God's selective interference in the ongoing affairs of the world, is so acute as to render any form of rational theism impossible. In the same debate Hick argues for a ‘minimalist’ position which allows divine intervention only in the form of a general, radiated, goodness and benevolence on which human beings may draw. In this paper I want to show that reason permits and some evidence suggests another (and richer) possibility – the possibility that God intervenes through the inner life and perhaps by establishing the cast of characters. I shall construct this alternative usingideas developed from Cardinal Newman and Matthew Arnold.

The claim that God is eternal is a standard feature of late–classical and mediaeval philosophical theology. It is prominent in discussions of the relation of God's foreknowledge to human freedom, and its consequences pervade traditional accounts of other kinds of divine knowledge, of God's will, and of God's relation to the world. So an examination of the concept of eternity promises to repay our efforts with a better understanding of the history of philosophical theology and with insight into the concept of God. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann's ‘Eternity’ is a forceful, sophisticated presentation and defence of the notion of eternity. Our treatment of eternity will focus on two of Stump and Kretzmann's claims. First, Stump and Kretzmann contend that eternity isa kind of ‘atemporal duration’. We will see that while this is true, it is only part of the story. Second, Stump and Kretzmann claim to provide a viable account of how the existence of an eternal being can be simultaneous with some temporal event. We will see that and why they have not done so.

The issue of incarnation in the formative centuries of the Judaism of the dual Torah concerns not the invention of an essentially new conception of God but the recovery of what was among other Judaisms an entirely conventional one. What concerns us is not so much why in light of the prior Judaic systems and their statements, the Judaism of the dual Torah represented God inincarnate form. It is how the incarnation of God attained realization. For in the earlier stages of the unfolding of the canon of the Judaism of the dual Torah, e.g. in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and related exegetical writings, we have no hint of an incarnation of God, and it is only in the final and complete statement of that Judaism that we confront, in full and whole realization, the notion of God with an individuality, a personality, a corporeal character. The answer to that question requires us to pursue two distinct lines of inquiry. The first concerns incarnation – treating as human and fleshly and corporeal what is to begin with either an object or an abstraction – as a mode of thought, not with special reference to God. Here we want to know the point at which, in the unfolding of the canon of the Judaism of the dual Torah, the conception of incarnation serves as a mode of presenting as a human person or personality some thing or some idea. Within this inquiry, further, we want to know precisely how the conception of incarnation comes to expression. The second addresses the issue why is it that in the pages of the Bavli in particular the process of incarnation reaches the person of God?

In the present essay our concern will be with some of the earliest documents that shed light on the development of Indian reflections on the puzzles of personal identity. These texts are derived from the Upanisads, which exemplify a type of literature that some philosophers may regard as classic, but not as philosophy. What I will be proposing here is that we attempt to regard such very ancient sources of Indian thought more philosophically, more in the manner that some recent writers have begun to re–examine the Presocratics. I attempt to show that although philosophical method was not yet developed in the early literature under consideration (as equally it was not in Anaxagoras or Heraclitus), several important arguments are nonetheless already emerging there in limine. In surveying these proto–arguments, we will also have occasion to remark on their historical and/or conceptual affinities with the developed philosophies of later ages.

Atheists have argued that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of God. They claim that (1) it would be wrong for a person to allow evil which one could prevent, and (2) because God is omnipotent, He could prevent evil. So, (3) since evil does exist, a perfectly good and omnipotent God does not exist. This is the oldest and most pressing attack on theism, and theists have developed a variety of defensive responses to this argument. In this paper I propose to outline a strategy which appears to have escaped recent attention, and to compare this strategy with two more widely discussed types of theodicy.