Every man, says Mencius, has within him this mind (heart) of commiseration, this pu-jen chih hsin that cannot bear to see another person suffer. To support his argument, Mencius cites the parable of the child about to fall into a well. A man with an innate mind of compassion unable to bear to see the child suffer would naturally feel the urge to run ahead to save the child (Mencius 2A.6). Yet elsewhere in Mencius 4A.17, it appears that had the potential victim been a drowning sister-in-law, the man would also be momentarily checked by a fear of impropriety. Since the sense of propriety has its beginning in the mind as much as the sense of compassion, is not the mind of goodness somehow divided against itself? The present essay will examine this possible dilemma.

Western philosophers are generally very unsympathetic to the notion of reincarnation, especially the idea of rebirth in another body in this world. This paper will argue that retributive rebirth as it is traditionally understood in Hindu thought involves serious problems given the ambiguousness of personal identity in the conception, difficulties which are born out in a moral tenuousness and which bring the reasonableness of the belief into question. However, though this conception of rebirth is the culturally and historically dominant version in Indian thought, it is not the sole conception. The ‘soul-making’ version I will develop and defend in this paper does not overcome the ambiguity associated with personal identity in the retributive version, but it nevertheless reasonably overrides the problems retributive rebirth encounters in such an association. And though soul-making rebirth is quite different in tone and in emphasis from the traditionally dominant retributive version, it can be found in varying degrees in certain Hindu philosophies, most vividly perhaps in Aurobindo Ghose. Moreover, this conception is not exclusive to Hinduism and is compatible even with some Christian theologies.

Was Thomas Aquinas the first major Western philosopher to distinguish systematically between things it would be contradictory to deny and other things? He certainly was willing to give his authority to the proposition that whatever is logically impossible (as we say in modern terminology) ‘does not come within the scope of divine omnipotence’. In the later Middle Ages, scholastic philosophers came virtually to equate achievable by divine power and (describable in phraseology) free of contradiction (hence also not (describable in phraseology) free of contradiction and not achievable (even) by divine power).

At least since Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, theism has been under indictment; indeed it has been on trial for its life. In part, this indictment is that the enormous quantity, variety, and distribution of evils evident in the natural world disconfirm the core beliefs of theism. Those core beliefs, I think, are the following pair: there exists a being at once omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, the worshipful creator of the universe (henceforth G); and G stands in a relation to the natural world which might be called one of moral responsibility (henceforth M). Obviously, theism says a lot more than the above, rather abrupt, conjunction; nevertheless, that conjunction constitutes its core.

In ‘Reincarnation and Relativized Identity’1 J. J. MacIntosh argues that reincarnation is impossible. I wish to make a slightly backhanded defence of reincarnation by showing that MacIntosh's argument does not succeed. I do not follow his recipe for defence of reincarnation exactly:

The antifoundationalist defence of belief in God set forth by Alvin Plantinga has been widely discussed in recent years. Classical foundationalism assumes that there are two kinds of beliefs that we are justified in holding: beliefs supported by evidence, and basic beliefs. Our basic beliefs are those bedrock beliefs that need no evidence to support them and upon which our other beliefs must rest. For the foundationalist, the only beliefs that can be properly basic are either self-evident, or incorrigible, or evident to the senses. Belief in God is none of these. Thus, says the foundationalist, belief in God is justified only if there is sufficient evidence to back it up.

David Hume's philosophy is notoriously naturalistic. It is an attempt to give an account of man and his world relying only on evidence which can be gleaned from sense observation and introspection. Whatever can be inferred from this evidence is a proper philosophical conclusion.

‘Open-minded’, ‘detached’, ‘objective’, ‘disinterested’, ‘impartial’, ‘non-partisan’ and ‘independent’ are terms typically used when Religious Studies seeks to present itself as an academic discipline. Phrases like ‘methodological agnosticism’, ‘suspension of judgement’, and ‘procedural neutrality’ are also found, in attempts to formulate an appropriate methodology. Seldom are those terms and phrases precisely defined, or the differences between them examined. Yet a moment's reflection reveals that they are far from clear or unambiguous, and that if they are to be used at all effectively in this context, more work must be done by way of preliminary analysis and clarification.

One part of the Clifford–James dispute is still with us, namely a more inclusive foundationalism which has grown out of criticism of evidentialism in relation to belief in God. ‘Evidentialism’ will here mean the view, attributed to thinkers in the middle ages, that foundational premises must be either self-evident or evident to the senses. One answer now given by some (chiefly Plantinga) to such foundational questions is that belief in God is a properly basic belief, though not properly basic in an evidentialist sense. Thus one can rationally hold such a belief without proving it by argument. I will argue that belief in some specific personal God, such as Allah, Yahweh or Jesus as the Christ (Peter's confession), as constituted by sacred texts is the form belief takes for Christian believers and that there are special questions as to whether such beliefs can be shown to be properly basic.

In his book Ethics Without God, Kai Nielsen voices criticism of Christian thought and morality. In two of his major arguments, Nielsen contends that morality can not be based on the Christian religion or similar theistic metaphysics, and secondly, that if morality is based on God, or God's will, any ‘moral decisions’ are arbitrary and involve no reasoning on the part of the individual. These two criticisms of Christian moral thought can be met by drawing upon the Ideal Observer Theory in ethics.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the developments in the thinking of Rudolf Otto, as far as possible through his theology, philosophy, psychology and phenomenology. The fact that Otto's interests took him into so many fields at once suggests serious breaks and inconsistencies in his work. This paper, however, will argue for a consistency in his thought and development. To achieve this requires an appreciation of the close connection he felt to exist between his philosophy and psychology, the theoretical and the empirical. We know that Otto was strongly influenced by the philosophy of J. Fr. Fries. Yet it is by no means necessary to agree either with Fries or with what Otto made of Fries' system in order to trace continuity. We simply need to understand Otto's development in the context of the time.

To say that God is omniscient is normally to say that God knows all true propositions and none that are false. But what exactly is knowable? Some believe that God possesses only ‘present knowledge’ (PK). All that is know-able is that which is (or has been) actual and that which follows deterministically from it. Others believe that God possesses ‘simple foreknowledge’ (SFK). God can also know what will actually happen, including what humans will freely do. And still others believe that God possesses ‘middle knowledge’ (MK). God is able to know not only what will happen in the actual world or what could happen in all worlds but also what would in fact happen in every possible situation, including what every possible free creature would in fact do in every possible situation in which that creature could find itself.

In the autumn of 1915 at Princeton, the graduate student, Charles Hendel, and the professor, Norman Kemp Smith, went for a walk. Hendel thought the time auspicious to announce his desire to write a dissertation on Rousseau. As happens not infrequently between an adviser and a student, Kemp Smith attempted to dissuade his student from his intention and advised him to look into David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, instead. The professor noted that a ‘deadlock’ had long existed between those who thought the sceptic, Philo, spoke for Hume, and those who thought the theistic views of Cleanthes most nearly echoed Hume's true opinions on religion. Perhaps through researching the problem, Kemp Smith suggested, Hendel could ‘resolve that impasse and establish Hume's position on the religious question’.

Nobody is likely to claim that the name of Henry Longueville Mansel is an important one in contemporary Anglican theology. During the 130 years since he gave his Bampton Lectures in 1858 his work has been only sporadically reviewed. But he deserves more than this. As the title of his lecture – The Limits of Religious Thought – suggests, Mansel was partly responsible for bringing the philosophy of Kant into British religious thinking; and the problems he faced in trying to make a concept of regulative truth consistent with orthodox Anglican doctrine make his intellectual dilemma of unusual interest to the modern reader.

Throughout their long history suffering has been the hallmark of the Jewish people. Driven from their homeland, buffeted from country to country and plagued by persecutions, Jews have been rejected, despised and led as a lamb to the slaughter. The Holocaust is the most recent chapter in this tragic record of events. The Third Reich's system of murder squads, concentration camps and killing centres eliminated nearly 6 million Jews; though Jewish communities had previously been decimated, such large scale devastation profoundly affected the Jewish religious consciousness. For many Jews it has seemed impossible to reconcile the concept of a loving, compassionate and merciful God with the terrible events of the Nazi regime. A number of important Jewish thinkers have grappled with traditional beliefs about God in the light of such suffering, but in various ways their responses are inadequate. If the Jewish faith is to survive, Holocaust theology will need to incorporate a belief in the Afterlife in which the righteous of Israel who died in the death camps will receive their due reward.

Three of the most venerable objections to anthropomorphic conceptions of the divine are traceable to Xenophanes and his critique of the early Greek gods. Though suitably revised, these ancient criticisms have persisted over the centuries, plaguing various religious communities, particularly those of classical Christian commitment. Xenophanes complained that anthropomorphism leads to unseemly characterizations, noting that both over the ages, the list of unseemly characteristics has expanded somewhat.

Neither the existence of God nor the nature of God is apparent or obvious. If God exists, why is it not entirely clear to everyone that this is so? How can theists explain God's hiddenness, and how plausible are their explanations? God, if God exists, is an omnipotent, morally good, omnipresent being, than whom none greater can be conceived. Surely it is well within the abilities of God to let God's existence and nature be known to us. Why isn't the existence and nature of our Heavenly Father as apparent as, say, the existence of our various earthly fathers?