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God and Abstract Objects
The Theological Challenge of Platonism In the prologue of the Gospel of John, the evangelist presents a vision of God as the Creator of all things: “In the beginning was the Word, ...
Creation <em>ex nihilo</em>: Theology and Science</p>
Introduction “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1.1). With majestic simplicity the author of the opening chapter of Genesis thus differentiated his viewpoint, not only from the ancient creation myths of Israel’s n...
The Resurrection of Theism
"The contemporary Western intellectual world," declares the noted philosopher Alvin Plantinga, "is a battleground or arena in which rages a battle for men's souls."[1] It is in the field of philosophy that the decisive battles are taking place, and the out...
Review Article: <em>God and Necessity</em> by Brian Leftow
Brian Leftow, God and Necessity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 575 pp., ISBN 978-0-19-926335-6 In 1974 Alvin Plantinga’s The Nature of Necessity signaled a renaissance of Christian philosophy in the Anglophone world. Brian Leftow’s new bo...
God and the 'Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics'
The problem of mathematics’ applicability to the physical world Philosophers of mathematics are sharply divided as to whether mathematical entities like numbers, sets, functions, and so on really exist or not. Realists hold that such objects do exist as...
Peter Van Inwagen, Substitutional Quantification, and Ontological Commitment
We take it for granted that if a notion is meaningful, then an intelligent and informed philosopher will be able to make sense of it. So when a gifted philosopher informs us that after due reflection, he “doesn’t understand” a certain notion,...
Review: God and Necessity
Leftow’s God and Necessity is a remarkable achievement, a major contribution to modal metaphysics, striking in its creativity, impressive in its argumentation, and mind-numbing in its thoroughness. Reading the book is somewhat reminiscent of ploughing on...
Concept of God in Islam and Christianity
My interest in Islam was quickened by my study of the history of the cosmological argument for a personal creator of the universe. Early Christian commentators on Aristotle living in Alexandria, Egypt, developed this argument in response to Aristotle’s d...
What Happens When We Die?
Recently there have been a number of books written by or about people who have died, or been very near death, and who claim to have gone to heaven and then returned--for example, books like 90 Minutes in Heaven or Heaven is Real. These books have become runawa...
The Scientific Kalam Cosmological Argument
What is the Kalam Cosmological Argument? The word “kalam” is an Arabic word that denotes medieval Islamic theology. Muslim theologians, when Islam swept over Egypt in North Africa, absorbed the Christian thought that had been in those areas, like i...