Paul Elmer More's philosophy was self-styled ‘dualism’, and because developed initially from a student's enthusiasm instigated by a book on Manicheism, has often been misinterpreted. In this paper, on the basis of More's long development, I shall try to survey the nuances of his ‘dualism’ or ‘dualisms’, the various aspects of ‘dualism’ which he developed largely through case studies of thinkers of the past. In a significant way, to parody William James, the Shelburne Essays might well be called ‘The Varieties of Dualistic Experience’, and of course for More ‘dualistic’ was virtually a synonym for ‘religious’. Out of these studies issued a Christian Platonism, or more precisely, a philosophy of the Incarnation, particularly in Christ the Word. The subsequent volume in a series called ‘The Greek Tradition: From the Death of Socrates to the Council of Chalcedon’ is The Catholic Faith. Although More called his dualism ‘absolute’, and it is sometimes presented as ‘absolute dualism’, the ‘sacramental idea’ at the heart of Christianity is said to rest ‘ultimately upon a dualistic conception of the world, in accordance with which matter and spirit are essentially distinct yet mutually interdependent. It implies on the one side that matter can be indefinitely adapted to spiritual uses, and on the other side that spirit requires now, and, so far as our knowledge and imagination reach, will always require the aid of some sort of corporeal instruments. It points to a divine purpose unfolding itself in a continuous process wherein the stuff of existence is…transmuted into an ever finer medium of order and beauty and righteousness and joy.

Martin Heidegger's explication of Pindar's assertion that ‘to glorify was the essence of poetry’ puts it quite well. He tells us that for Pindar the word does not derive its force from what is already complete in itself. For then man would be glorifying what is already glorious, that which already has the power to impress men. At best the word then would denote an acknowledgment or a confession of being impressed. Instead, he insists, the word denotes the power of making to appear, or to extol a place.1

The concept of revelation is a pivotal one, both in the study of religion in general, and with regard to Christianity in particular. Yet it is a fluid concept that has undergone notable transformations down the ages as succeeding generations have re-interpreted it in the light of fresh presuppositions which they have come to share. My purpose here is to offer a re-interpretation in the light of some contemporary presuppositions which, though not universal, are, I shall argue, sufficiently widely held, sufficiently basic, and sufficiently secure, to warrant accommodation. I shall be concerned primarily, though not in principle exclusively, with the concept of revelation in a Christian context.

There is some important data which has not as yet found its way into philosophic discussions on the problem of evil. Some religious people report that suffering, instead of being contrary to the love of God, is actually a medium in and through which his love can be experienced. This looks highly paradoxical, but it will be our purpose to show that it is intelligible and that it has important consequences for philosophical discussions of the problem of evil.

Whether or not any notion of probability is meaningful in the philosophy of religion has been the subject of considerable discussion. Ranging from our common sense usage in which probability implies ‘possibly’ but not ‘certainly’ to its highly sophisticated usage in pure mathematics, the question of its philosophical foundations is one of the most controversial in logical theory. Some thinkers argue that statistical frequency is the only legitimate notion of probability, and, inasmuch as such frequency is tied to discrete observable phenomena, probability judgments have little, if any, application to religious explanations of the entire universe. Foremost, perhaps, among philosophers of religion in Anglo-American thought who support this concept is John Hick. In this article, I shall delineate Hick's attitude towards probability and evidence and how it relates to his concept of faith. Then I shall raise some critical questions about his analysis and try to show that his view is unnecessarily restrictive – even inconsistent – in places. To look at Hick and probability in focus, however, we must look through the lens of his general approach to epistemological issues.

Tan Tei Wei in ‘Mr Young on Miracles’ (Religious Studies, X (1974), 333–7) takes me to task over certain contentions of mine regarding the best understanding of ‘the miraculous’. I claim that the notion of a miracle as a violation of a law of nature by a particular interposition of a god, founders on the difficulty of rendering such a notion coherent. I offer instead the following account which is not subject to such a difficulty. Namely, that a miraculous event would be one brought about by God acting as a factor in the causally operative set of factors (out of the perhaps several possible sets sufficient for the event in question's occurrence), such that his activity alters the outcome from what it perhaps would have been if, contrary to fact, he had not been actively involved. It is open to a theist employing this account to say as well that had God not thus actively involved himself as a (specifically rather than just generally) active agent-factor, the (miraculous) effect would not have come about.

In his article ‘Infallibility’ (Religious Studies, March 1980) A. P. Martinich has argued that the logical character of infallible utterances has been generally misunderstood. Opponents and supporters of the doctrine of papal infallibility have both assumed, he claims, that infallible utterances are statements; but this is incorrect, for such utterances are not statements, but declarations. Consideration of this point, he believes, would enable us to see that the doctrine of papal infallibility is both coherent and correct.

The quest for the historical Jesus was assumed by Schweitzer to have started from Reimarus in the eighteenth century; in fact it began with Mary, John, Peter, Caiaphas and many others in the first, and was found by them to be futile and doomed to frustration. The Gospels are a witness, all the stronger for being unreflective, implicit and probably unwitting, that Jesus was impossible to know as men are known. The Gospels tell you what people heard Jesus say, and what they saw him do. They record the effect he had on people, the things he prompted and provoked them to do and say. They enable you to know about Jesus, about his teaching, his activity and even his emotions. But to know Jesus, to enter his mind and heart, to see the world from his point of view, they recognized to be not susceptible to ordinary human empathy, and therefore to be beyond the scope of their narrative. Knowing Jesus is an act of faith and spiritual recognition or it is nothing. Getting to know others is a human gift, but getting to know Jesus is the gift of the Holy Spirit.