This paper has four roots.

First, an increasing dissatisfaction over the gulf between classical and theological studies. Christianity in origin, after all, is a part of the story of the ancient world, and has to be seen in context. The context is complex: it is Judaea as part of the Hellenistic world under the rule of Rome: we ignore any part of that context at our peril. Classical scholars tend to be suspicious of those with theological interests: I was forbidden by an examining board of the University of London to set the first verse of St John's Gospel for comment in a paper on Greek philosophy: they were being doctrinaire, not I. But equally some theologians have neglected the disciplined study of the ancient world. It would not be so bad if they left the context out; but instead they offer windy generalisations, secondhand, ill-based and false. Some corrective is needed.

In recent decades, particularly since the publication of Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy (1917; Eng. trans., 1923) and Gerardus Van der Leeuw's Religion in Essence and Manifestion (1933; Eng. trans., 1938), what is known as the ‘phenomenological’ approach to the study of religion has become extremely popular. I myself, in teaching courses in religious studies, have for a number of years used Van der Leeuw's classic study; it is a work of amazing insight and scholarship, and perhaps the single greatest example ofjust how successful the method of phenomenology can be when applied to a distinct field of study. But it is not only in the domain of religious studies that phenomenologists have made important contributions; in the spheres of social and political theory, for example, as well as in the philosophy of art, the philosophy of psychology, and other areas, there have been notable accomplishments.

I show how mathematical platonism combined with belief in the God of classical theism can respond to Field's epistemological objection. I defend an account of divine mathematical knowledge by showing that it falls out of an independently motivated general account of divine knowledge. I use this to explain the accuracy of God's mathematical beliefs, which in turn explains the accuracy of our own. My arguments provide good news for theistic platonists, while also shedding new light on Field's influential objection.

The religionsgeschichtliche Schule, born in Germany towards the end of the XIXth century, rapidly met with considerable success throughout the world of scholarship. It reached its zenith during the first decennia of the present century, when it played a leading part in the study of Christian origins, and began to fall out of favour shortly after World War I. Alfred Loisy's Les Mystères païens et le mystère chrétien, first published in 1919 and re-edited in 1930, represents one of its most significant and also one of its last productions. Very few scholars, if any, would be willing nowadays to enlist under its banner. And yet there can be little doubt that this school, despite its obvious shortcomings and unwarranted systematisations, has, in its time, done the cause of learning signal service.

The Christian faith, according to Alfred North Whitehead's familiar premise, ‘has always been a religion seeking a metaphysic’. Although it is debatable whether one should accept this thesis in a constructive sense, it does not appear that Christian belief from either an offensive or defensive position has the option of escaping from its philosophical implications. If, for example, a meeting with Christ occurs—either in an initial New Testament sense or through secondary channels in a contemporary moment—which functionally produces an existential consciousness of liberation that one may even dare to call ‘forgiveness of sins’, what confidence may he have that the experience is real and not only apparent, enduring and not just exuberance of mood, an encounter with life that touches the whole of his concern and not merely one atomistic fragment? These are surely questions which admit varying degrees of solution; yet they are genuine experiential issues which call for a recognition of ontological depth if they are to retain their functional effectiveness. This necessity which theology has of fulfilling its task within the comprehensive context of ontology is portrayed convincingly by Gerhard Ebeling in his essay entitled ‘Theology and Reality’ when he affirms:

‘Theology has to do with reality as a totality—not with the sum of all the realms of reality and all the ways in which reality encounters us…. However much theology is based upon the testimony of Christian faith, it has yet to make good faith's claim by bringing to expression what unconditionally concerns every man in his totality.’

This article re-examines the applicability of Kant's dependency thesis to Aquinas’ cosmological proofs for the existence of God. The first part of the article provides a summary of Kant's dependency thesis, followed by a review of a defence of Aquinas by J. William Forgie. The second part of the article explains some of the logical apparatus upon which Aquinas’ argument hinges – specifically his understanding of the a priori/a posteriori distinction. I conclude by calling attention to certain distinct metaphysical assumptions within Kant's and Aquinas’ respective logical apparatus that would have to be addressed prior to the more specific question of whether Kant's critique of the cosmological argument is applicable to Aquinas.

The religions of Indian origin occupy considerable space in the Encyclopedia. There are literally hundreds of articles, some quite extensive, that deal with the relevant material. Such a generous treatment need not come as a surprise. The editor in chief was the late Mircea Eliade, the author of a highly influential work on yoga; he himself honoured the Encyclopedia with the entry on the same subject. Moreover, in any global account of religion the Indian traditions ought to figure prominently, given their enormous influence all over Asia.

Is (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?1

The purpose of this article is to develop a solution to the problem of evil within the context of a ‘revisionist' concept of God. The traditional approach to the problem of evil has been to assume one particular model of God, and then to ascertain how evil can be reconciled with that model. I hope to demonstrate that this is a mistake. What needs to be done, rather, is to acknowledge the existence of evil, and to ask whether this problem is generated by a faulty model of God. What I shall contend is that it is the traditional concept of God which generates this area of philosophical and theological perplexity, not the nature and function of evil. In particular, I shall attempt to show that the problem admits of a much more acceptable solution if the Christian believer abandons the notion of God as ‘a person’ or a disembodied agent, and conceives of God in a less overtly ‘personalistic’ manner.

There are some quite striking similarities between the moral psychology Maimonides presents in ‘Eight Chapters’ and Aristotle's moral psychology. They both deny that individuals have the virtues and vices by nature; they put a great deal of weight on habituation as a formative factor with respect to character; and they both characterize virtues in terms of lying in a mean between excess and defect. These are fundamentals of moral psychology that they share. But there are some very significant differences as well, and these are brought out quite clearly by a consideration of Maimonides' ‘Laws of Repentance’. It is worth looking at these differences not just for the sake of seeing how some Aristotelian claims are modified by the Jewish tradition, but also in order to see how moral psychology and the interpretation of the scope of human volition are altered by certain types of theistic commitments.

In responding to the problem that evil poses for belief in the existence of an omnipotent and all good deity, a number of Christian philosophers have followed Augustine in making the free will defence (FWD) the foundation of their theodicies. The FWD seems to be well suited for the important role it has played in Christian religious thought. Not only does it admit the reality of evil in God's world, but it also proposes to free God from moral responsibility for at least a considerable portion of that evil. A few philosophers, e.g. Terence Penelhum, have even argued that ‘… the Christian theist is committed to some form or other of the free will defence …’ because of the Christian understanding of the nature of God and man. Whether or not this is true, the argument that it was not possible for God to create free human beings without permitting some degree of evil in his world (the FWD) has been sufficiently influential that those sceptics who have intended to show that the reality of evil makes theism an intellectually indefensible position have usually felt compelled to treat it. For similar reasons, a number of theistic philosophers have felt obligated to defend the FWD against such sceptical attacks.