That God is of great beauty is religiously significant as a component of the widespread hope of a blessed experience in this or the next life. This motivates the project of formulating the strongest coherent thesis of divine beauty. This chapter has two parts. In Section 9.1 I argue for the incoherence of Perfect Divine Beauty. The natural reaction to this incoherence is to replace the idea of perfection, but in a way that coheres with the theists' religious tradition. I explore a range of such replacements, motivating the thesis of Pre-eminent Divine Beauty, that the actual divine beauty is infinitely greater than that of the physical universe. In Section 9.2 I examine various arguments against God's great beauty. They are the Argument from Divine Simplicity (and the related the Argument from Divine Spirituality), the Argument from Divine Necessity, and the Argument from Moral Righteousness.

Rebel Angel Theodicy - often called Satan Theodicy - is the thesis that horrendous evils are directly or indirectly caused by angels who disobeyed God. In this article, I defend it, developing Gary Emberger's suggestion that they influenced the course of evolution. After defending speculative theodicy, I expound Rebel Angel Theodicy and reply to seven objections that explicate the widespread judgement of implausibility: 1. That the existence of angels is metaphysically problematic. 2. That God has no good reason to create angels. 3. That angels have no power to harm human beings. 4. That God, foreknowing the possibility of rebellion, would not delegate to angels the power to guide evolution. 5. That even if there was a good reason for God to delegate this power to angels it is metaphysically impossible for an omnipotent God to do so. 6. That God, knowing of the angels' rebellion, would subsequently intervene to put evolution back onto the preferred divine plan. 7. That there is no plausible motive for angels to rebel.

Peter Forrest argues that Essential Catholicism is the one and only religion to which reasonable humanists could commit.Drawing on Immanuel Kant’sReligion within the Bounds of Bare Reasonand Ludwig Feuerbach’sThe Essence of Christianity, he provides an in-depth philosophical investigation into the synthesis of Catholicism and the Enlightenment. In this nuanced study humanity and divinity are two species of the same genus. Chapters defend the apologetic project from common objections and cover the argument from evil to Catholicism, the case for the Catholic synthesis, the argument from tradition, and finally the negative case for Essential Catholicism. Forrest elucidates how the various Catholic churches have Essential Catholicism in common, discussing the Roman Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox, and the Old Catholics, as well as High Church Anglicanism with Methodism as a borderline case. He argues that we can learn from other Christian denominations and from other religions, but Catholicism is the overarching and one true religion. An engaging and original account,The Essence of Catholicismdeparts from Vatican theory and provides a sharp philosophical reflection on a distinctive religious position within the Catholic tradition of thought.

I consider three candidates for ultimate understanding: (1) ultimate agency, the familiar idea of understanding the existence and nature of the universe as created by God for good reasons; (2) axiarchism, the initially counter-intuitive idea that goodness is the first cause of contingent reality; and (3) plenitude, the thesis that all possible types of situation are real. After some initial clarification, I note the problems with axiarchism, and offer solutions. These solutions require the unification of space and time as space-time, and the consequent introduction of what might be called hypertime, but which I take to be true time—Time with an upper case “T”. I note how axiarchism and plenitude may be combined into the Plenum Bonum thesis that all and only good universes are real. Next, I note some problems with agency as an ultimate way of understanding. Finally, I solve these by means of a theory of agency as completing axiarchism, the Good versus Good theory.

Naturalism, as I understand it, includes cosmological naturalism, ontological natural-ism and methodological naturalism. After clarifying these three theses I argue that the combination of ontological with methodological naturalism is untenable. I do so by providing a pro tanto case against ontological naturalism and show that it can be resisted, but only by abandoning method-ological naturalism. The pro tanto case is that ontological naturalism requires a version of what I call Redundancy Nominalism, but methodological naturalists should either reject it or at very least treat it, and hence ontological naturalism, as a speculation.

In this paper, I present a piece of natural theology, whose pro tanto conclusion is the existence of god-the-artist, that is a lower case "g" god, a creator who creates for the sake of beauty, but who is not worthy of worship, a god who can be admired but should not be loved. I then consider some only partially successful responses to this dismal conclusion. Finally, I show to reconcile the idea of a god motivated by love of beauty with the religious tradition of an upper case "G" God, who is not merely to be worshiped but loves us and invites a loving response.

David Armstrong in his A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility proposes that non-actual possibilities may be treated as fictions grounded in instantiated universals. In this paper, I first provide some objections to his theory. Then I make the case for Foundational Nominalism, the Armstrong inspired thesis that the whole of ontology supervenes on particulars described much as in the Quinean Nominalism that Armstrong rejected as an ontological ostrich. Finally, I argue that Foundational Nominalism permits a fictional theory of possibilities similar to Brian Skyrms' Tractarian Nominalism.

In his "Are Properties, Particular, Universal, or Neither?" Javier Cumpa argues that science not metaphysics explains how properties are instantiated. I accept this conclusion provided physics can be stated using rather few primitive predicates. In addition, he uses his scientific theory of instantiation to argue for Neutralism, his thesis that the "tie" between properties and their instances implies neither that properties are particular nor that they are universals. Neutralism, I claim, is a thesis that realist about universals have independent reason to accept and their opponents have reason to reject. So, neutralism is not neutral on the topic of whether properties are universals. Nor is Cumpa's Theory of Instantiation as naturalistic as he claims. I argue that although compatible with Ontological Naturalism, his theory provides a precedent for the non-naturalistic emergence of mental properties. Finally, I argue that because his theory requires a simple physics it presupposes a more rationalist epistemology than that of Methodological Naturalism.

Typical structural universals are not just the mereological sum of their constituents. Hence, there is the Structure Problem of explaining this non-mereological structure. The Instantiation Problem is that the predicate "U is instantiated by x, y, etc., in that order" is ill-suited to be a primitive, unanalyzed predicate. The proposed solution to these problems is based on the observation that if universal U is said to supervene upon universals V, W, etc., then it is the instantiation of U that supervenes on the instantiation of V, W, etc. Assuming there are few subvenient universals, which is admittedly a speculation, their instantiation may be explained in ways that would be uneconomic if there were too many.

By the Many Categories problem, I mean the prima facie violation of Ockham's Razor by realists about universals: there is, it might seem, just too much variety. Thus, David Armstrong posits both properties and relations. He also theorises about determinates of determinables. Another influential realist, E. J. Lowe distinguishes non-substantial from substantial universals. Yet again, both Armstrong and Lowe include in their ontology abstract particulars in addition to universals. My aim in this paper is to offer a unification of these categories using an operator-theory. First, I show how operators provide a theory of abstract particulars of relations and of impure relational properties. Then, using impure relational properties I derive the Fregean Abstraction Principle. After some metaphysics of mathematics, I provide a theory of determinables. Finally, I consider kinds and substances.