Christian Doctrines

Legal Pardon, Tensed Time, and the Expiation of Guilt

An argument appealing to the tensed nature of time shows that a legal pardon expunges guilt.

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Advice Well-Taken

Personal reflections on Alvin Plantinga’s pivotal essay “Advice to Christian Philosophers.”

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Philosophical Issues in the Atonement

It is the purpose of this article to examine certain philosophical problems involved in the classic doctrine of Christ’s substitutionary atonement, particularly penal substitution. Objections based ...

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On Systematic Philosophical Theology

The disciplines of systematic theology, dogmatic theology, fundamental theology, philosophical theology, and philosophy of religion are characterized and their relations to one another are discussed....

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Is God’s Moral Perfection Reducible to His Love?

Defenders of the identity thesis maintain that God’s moral perfection is reducible to and identical to His love. Unfortunately, this thesis overlooks the fact that, biblically, God‘s righteousness...

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God and Space

This paper inquires into the nature of God’s relationship to space. It explores two different views, one that God transcends space or exists aspatially and the other that God exists throughout space...

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Christ, Our Indemnitor

Although Jonathan Rutledge’s suggestions for reinterpreting some Old Testament atonement motifs might be accommodated by my theory of the atonement without great disruption, nevertheless such reinte...

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Is Penal Substitution Unsatisfactory?

It might be objected to penal substitutionary theories that punishing Christ could not possibly meet the demands of divine retributive justice. For punishing another person for my crimes would not ser...

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Eleonore Stump’s Critique of Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theories

The first three chapters of Eleonore Stump’s Atonement are devoted to a critique of atonement theories she styles “Anselmian,” including penal substitutionary theories. I focus on he...

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Divine Forgiveness and Legal Pardon

I argue that divine forgiveness of sinners, bzw. sins, is more akin to legal pardon than to forgiveness as it is usually understood in human relationships. For divine forgiveness involves not merely a...

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Ben Witherington III reviews Atonement and the Death of Christ and interviews William Lane Craig

Review It’s been a long, long time since I’ve read a good book on the atonement. The last one that I found really stimulating and challenging was Jurgen Moltmann’s The Crucified God...

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RESPONSE TO JEFF KOPERSKI

This paper is a response to a paper by philosopher of science Jeff Koperski entitled “The Nature of the Laws of Nature.”  Koperski addresses the question,  “What ultim...

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Is God the Son Begotten in His Divine Nature?

The doctrine of the Father’s begetting the Son in his divine nature, despite its credal affirmation, enjoys no clear scriptural support and threatens to introduce an objectionable ontological subord...

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Divine Forgiveness As Legal Pardon

I argue that divine forgiveness of sinners, bzw. sins, is more akin to legal pardon than to forgiveness as it is usually understood in human relationships. For divine forgiveness involves not merely a...

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Is Penal Substitution Unjust?

Penal substitution in a theological context is the doctrine that God inflicted upon Christ the suffering which we deserved as the punishment for our sins, as a result of which we no longer deserve pun...

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Is Penal Substitution Incoherent?: An Examination Of Mark Murphy's Criticisms

Some critics of the doctrine of penal substitution have alleged that the doctrine is incoherent because punishment entails an attitude of condemnation or censure towards the person punished, which imp...

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Time, Eternity, And Eschatology

In order to explore the interface of time, eternity, and eschatology, we must first come to a differentiated understanding of these three notions....

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A Formulation and Defense of the Doctrine of the Trinity

After a brief historical survey of patristic Trinitarian thought, I contrast Social and "Anti-Social" Trinitarian views. A Social Trinitarian model is then presented, according to which God is a soul ...

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Trinity Monotheism Once More: A Response to Daniel Howard-Snyder

A response to Howard-Snyder's criticism of the Social Trinitarian model laid out in Philosophical Foundations of a Christian Worldview. Exploiting insights from mereology, I offer a possible alte...

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Pantheists in Spite of Themselves? Pannenberg, Clayton, and Shults on Divine Infinity

Christian theology has traditionally affirmed that God is infinite. But some contemporary theologians seem to think that this affirmation stands in tension with the Christian belief in the reality of ...

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Does the Problem of Material Constitution Illuminate the Doctrine of the Trinity?

Michael Rea and Jeffery Brower have offered a provocative new model of the Trinity on the analogy of the Aristotelian solution to the problem of material constitution. Just as a fist and a hand can be...

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Flint's Radical Molinist Christology Not Radical Enough

In a pair of recent articles Thomas Flint has offered what he calls "some radical Molinist suggestions" for Christology. In the first of the pair, he argues that despite divine impeccability Christ�...

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"Lest Anyone Should Fall": A Middle Knowledge Perspective on Perseverance and Apostolic Warnings

Apostolic warnings against apostasy pose a difficulty for the classic doctrine of perseverance of the saints because either the warnings seem superfluous or else it seems possible for the believer to ...

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