Alternative concepts of God: essays on the metaphysics of the divine

310 Pages·2016·1.4 MB·English

by  Andrei A. Buckareff

Alternative Concepts of God

Alternative Concepts
of God
Essays on the Metaphysics
of the Divine
edited by
Andrei A. Buckareff
and Yujin Nagasawa
1
3
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First Edition published in 2016
Impression: 1
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Contents
List of Contributors vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Alternative Conceptions of Divinity and
Contemporary Analytic Philosophy of Religion 1
Andrei A. Buckareff and Yujin Nagasawa
Part I. Pantheism
1. The Personal Pantheist Conception of God 21
Peter Forrest
2. Pantheism as Panpsychism 41
Karl Pfeifer
3. A Way of Picturing God 50
John Leslie
4. Naturalistic Pantheism 64
Brian Leftow
Part II. Panentheism
5. Modal Panentheism 91
Yujin Nagasawa
6. Concepts of God and Problems of Evil 106
John Bishop and Ken Perszyk
7. Horrors: To What End? 128
Marilyn McCord Adams
Part III. Further Alternatives
8. Taking the Mind of God Seriously: Why and How to
Become a Theistic Idealist 147
Charles Taliaferro
9. God for All Time: From Theism to Ultimism 164
J. L. Schellenberg
10. Playing the God Game: The Perils of Religious Fictionalism 178
Robin Le Poidevin
vi Contents
Part IV. Causal versus Non-causal Accounts
11. The Divine as Ground of Existence and of
Transcendental Values: An Exploration 195
Willem B. Drees
12. Theological Realism, Divine Action, and Divine Location 213
Andrei A. Buckareff
13. Free Will and the Mythology of Causation 234
Hugh J. McCann
Part V. Naturalism and Alternative Concepts
14. Samuel Alexander’s Space-Time God: A Naturalist
Rival to Current Emergentist Theologies 255
Emily Thomas
15. On Religious Naturalism 274
Eric Steinhart
Index 295
List of Contributors
Marilyn McCord Adams is Recurrent Visiting Professor of Philosophy at
Rutgers University, USA.
John Bishop is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Andrei A. Buckareff is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Marist College,
USA.
Willem B. Drees is Professor of Philosophy of the Humanities at Tilburg University,
Netherlands.
Peter Forrest is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the University of New
England, Australia.
Brian Leftow is Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion,
Oriel College, Oxford, UK.
John Leslie is University Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of
Guelph, Canada.
Hugh J. McCann is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Texas A&M University,
USA.
Yujin Nagasawa is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Ken Perszyk  is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University of
Wellington, New Zealand.
Karl Pfeifer is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Saskatchewan,
Canada.
Robin Le Poidevin is Professor of Metaphysics at the University of Leeds, UK.
J. L. Schellenberg is Professor of Philosophy at Mount Saint Vincent University,
Canada.
Eric Steinhart is Professor of Philosophy at William Paterson University, USA.
Charles Taliaferro is Professor of Philosophy at St. Olaf College, USA.
Emily Thomas is NWO Veni Research Fellow at the University of Groningen,
Netherlands.

Acknowledgements
This volume originated in our project “Exploring Alternative Concepts of God,” which
was funded by the John Templeton Foundation. We wish to thank the Foundation for
its generous financial and academic support. Neither the positions we present and
defend in our respective contributions to this book nor the views of any of the authors
who contributed to this collection reflect any of the commitments of the John
Templeton Foundation. While the Foundation has generously supported this project,
we have neither been constrained in our explorations nor directed to promote any par-
ticular perspective. We would particularly like to thank Michael Murray, John
Churchill, Daniel Martin, and Alex Arnold from the John Templeton Foundation for
their help in this project. Some of the contributors to this volume were interviewed for
Robert Lawrence Kuhn’s PBS TV documentary series Closer To Truth. The interviews
and TV episodes based on them can be watched on the program website (<http://
www.closertotruth.com>).
We would also like to thank Peter Momtchiloff and other staff of Oxford University
Press and Sorin Sabou for their editorial support. Additionally, we are also grateful to
anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and constructive suggestions. We also
wish to thank the journal Conceptus: Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie for permission to use
Karl Pfeifer’s paper, “Pantheism as Panpsychism,” originally published in volume 30 in
1997 of that journal and appearing here having been substantially revised and updated.
Finally, we are also grateful to our respective institutions, Marist College and the
University of Birmingham, for their support of our work on this book and the larger
project of which this was a piece. Andrei Buckareff, in particular, would like to thank
the Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty at Marist College, Thomas
Wermuth, and the Dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Marist, Martin Shaffer, for
giving him regular course releases that afforded him extra time to work on this and
other related projects.