The second love commandment is: "You shall love the neighbor as yourself" (Lev. 19:18, Matt. 22:39). We commonly read this to mean we should love the neighbor in the same way we love ourselves. I argue that Kierkegaard provides an alternative. Instead of reading the "as yourself" clause as saying: "as you love yourself," I present a reading where in "as yourself," the "self" designates your God-given, unique role as a lover of neighbor. Thus, instead of extending your self-love to others, the Kierkegaardian command is to embrace and perfect the particular ability to love given to you by God.
A novel argument for the existence of God is presented, based on demonstrating that prior to its puzzling emergence, the seven-day week was unimaginable, undesirable, and (socially) infeasible. Indeed, we argue that game theory reveals that the launch of a Sabbath-cycle, like the seven-day week initially was, cannot have occurred without extra-human support. The argument gains additional force by a) noting how the Pentateuch is an insightful "sociological witness" to the infeasibility of the Sabbath-cycle's inauguration; b) integrating it with the (weaker, but complementary) Kuzari argument, on the infeasibility of propagating a false myth of mass revelation; c) considering two unattested possibilities-that a human king might legislate a Sabbath- cycle and that it might emerge via an iterated game; and d) noting theologically attractive features of the argument, including that the week's spread means that a divine gift to one people became a blessing for humankind.
In contemporary analytic philosophy, much of the literature has focused on the coherence of the doctrine of the Trinity and the subordination of the Son and the Holy Spirit. However, little attention has been given to the hypostatic structure of the divine persons-that is, the intra-Trinitarian relations among them. This paper aims to address that gap by jumpstarting the conversation. I begin by presenting a minimalist account of the Trinity-an account sufficient to facilitate a productive discussion on the subject of this paper. In Section 2, I outline two models of the hypostatic structure: the two-origin and single-origin models. I argue in favor of the latter, because two-origin models undermine the simplicity of the Holy Spirit's hypostasis-an objection originally articulated by St. Photios the Great. The paper concludes by proposing that the distinction between being begotten and proceeding may be illuminated by the Spirit's eternal resting in the Son.
John Henry Newman (1843) has defended the position that there isn't anything the church ought to believe today that it hasn't always held since the beginning. This is a bold claim, for it seems to commit Newman to the view that the early church held propositions to be true that it was not then conscious of believing. While Newman seeks to smooth this over by invoking the notion of a "religious impression," it is unclear that these states are in the right metaphysical shape to serve their intended role. In this paper I draw on recent work in the philosophy of perception to defend Newman's proposal.
