A central tenet of Reformed theology was the doctrine of justification by imputed righteousness: the faithful are not saved on account of their own righteousness, but purely by the gracious decision of God to ‘impute’ or ‘account’ the perfect righteousness of his Son unto them. While this doctrine was a popular target for broader anti-Calvinist criticism, this chapter demonstrates that Whichcote, Cudworth, More and Smith challenged the Reformed doctrine by producing an explicitly Platonic account of justification on which believers are rendered acceptable to God by deification (i.e. by direct, internal conformity to and participation in the nature of God). This model of justification is distinctive, even against the wider background of English anti-Calvinism, and provides one of the strongest indications of the close philosophical alignment of Whichcote, More, Cudworth and Smith. As the present chapter will demonstrate, to their Calvinist critics such as Anthony Tuckney, it was the Cambridge Platonists’ views about justification that constituted their most egregious departure from Reformed doctrine and that most clearly unmasked the ‘Platonic’ character of their thought.

This chapter develops an account of permissible suspension that builds on the views of justification, evidence, and defeat defended in the previous chapters. The view is superior to extant competitors in that it successfully predicts epistemic normative failure in cases of suspension generated by evidence and defeat resistance. On this view, doxastically justified suspension is suspension generated by properly functioning knowledge-generating processes. In turn, properly functioning knowledge-generating processes uptake knowledge and ignorance indicators.

This chapter surveys recent accounts of the epistemic permissibility of suspended judgement in an attempt to thereby identify the normative resources required for explaining the epistemically problematic nature of evidence resistance. Since paradigmatic cases of evidence resistance involve belief suspension on propositions that are well supported by evidence, such as vaccine safety and climate change, the literature on permissible suspension seems to be a straightforward starting point for my investigation: after all, any plausible view of permissible suspension will have to predict epistemic impermissibility in these paradigmatic resistance cases. I look at three extant accounts of permissible suspension – a simple knowledge-based account, a virtue-based account, and a respect-based account – and argue that they fail to provide the needed resources for this project. Further on, the chapter identifies the source of the said difficulties and gestures towards a better way forward.

This part of the book develops a full positive epistemology: an account of the epistemic normativity of evidence resistance, in conjunction with novel accounts of epistemic oughts, evidence, defeat, and permissible suspension. This first chapter argues that resistance to evidence is an instance of epistemic malfunction. It first puts forth a normative picture according to which the epistemic function of our cognitive systems is generating knowledge, and epistemic norms drop right out of this function. Second, it shows how this picture accommodates epistemic obligations, which, in turn, explain the normative failure instantiated in cases of resistance to evidence. According to this view, cognitive systems that fail to take up easily available evidence and defeat instantiate input-level malfunctioning. Input-level malfunctioning is a common phenomenon in traits the proper functioning of which is input dependent, such as our respiratory systems. Since our cognitive systems, I argue, are systems the proper functioning of which is input dependent, we should expect the failure at stake in resistance cases.

This chapter puts forth a novel view of evidence in terms of knowledge indicators, and it shows that it is superior to its competition in that it can account for the epistemic impermissibility of resistance cases, as well as for the effect that resistance to evidence has on doxastic justification. Very roughly, knowledge indicators are facts that enhance closeness to knowledge: a fact e is evidence for S that p is the case if and only if S is in a position to know e and e increases the evidential probability that p for S.

I read Kripke’s sketches of our ordinary view of meaning in his book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language as attempts to highlight the features of meaning that enable us to draw the distinction between what seems right and what is right. I argue that Kripke thinks the best way to clarify these features of meaning is to describe metasemantic conditions that a speaker’s words must satisfy if the speaker is to be warranted in asserting a sentence in which the words occur. Although the view of meaning I attribute to Kripke is initially compelling, I argue that it rests on a subtle yet fundamental misunderstanding of the distinction between what seems right and what is right.

This chapter contends that in Romans 2, Paul argues that the prophetic promises to make Israel obedient via the “Torah written on the heart” and the “circumcision of the heart” and a “new heart and new spirit” are presently being fulfilled. But in a startling twist, he includes uncircumcised gentiles among those receiving these things promised to Israel, building on his case in Rom 1 that Israel’s historic idolatry and immorality opened the door for gentiles to be included due to God’s impartiality.

This chapter argues that Paul’s gospel was based on the conviction that God’s promises through the prophets—specifically the promise of a renewed covenant with Israel—were being fulfilled through Jesus’ death, resurrection, and the gift of the spirit. Working primarily from 2 Corinthians 3 and the central chapters of Romans, this chapter puts Paul in conversation with Jubilees, a variety of texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QS, CD, 1QPHa, etc.), Philo of Alexandria, and more. The chapter demonstrates that all of these texts bear witness to a view of Israel as having fallen under the Torah’s curses for covenantal disobedience and awaiting a restoration that includes an ethical transformation through divine intervention.

This chapter evaluates the landscape of Pauline studies, demonstrating the need for reevaluation of Paul’s understanding of the relationship between Israel, the Jews, and the non-Jewish individuals receiving the spirit through Paul’s ministry. Contrary to many modern readings, Paul’s gospel is not systematically opposed to “legalism” or “ethnocentrism,” and his treatment of (former) gentiles as descendants not only of Abraham but of Israel begs explanation. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the composition and interpretive capacity of the recipients of Paul’s letters and a discussion of key terms in the Pauline letters.

This chapter offers a theology of the Atonement, building on Augustine’s account of the Cross. It argues that, on the Cross, Jesus opens and joins himself fully to the death-dealing that is the inner logic of all sinful human community, and overcomes it in the Resurrection.