First Causes: Divine and Human

Divine Eros and Divine Providence in Proclus’ Educational System

Dimensions of the Human Being and of Divine Action

Humans are three-dimensional, body-soul-spirit entities, but nevertheless unitary, indivisible persons. Animal behavior includes deterministic and random constituents. It may be modeled in terms of information systems, containing regulatory loops. Goal settings for these may be fixed, as in “lower” animals, or governed by internal adaptive supervisory systems freely selecting from alternative r...

Metaepistemology and Divine Revelation

In Crossing the Threshold of Divine Revelation, William Abraham offers a rich, subtle defense of an epistemology of divine revelation. In this paper, I focus on a cluster of metaepistemological claims made by Abraham. Specifically, I argue that Abraham’s remarks about epistemic fit and the epistemic standards we bring to bear in making evaluations of divine revelation claims commit him to a spe...

Divine Hiddenness and Affective Forecasting

In this paper I argue that J. L. Schellenberg’s Divine Hiddenness Argument is committed to a problematic implication that is weakened by research in cognitive psychology on affective forecasting. Schellenberg’s notion of a nonresistant nonbeliever logically implies that for any such person, it is true that she would form the proper belief in God if provided with what he calls “probabilifying” e...

To air is human, to prevent is divine.

As we’ve mentioned, there’s plenty of reason to believe that the overexcited cop thought that he was firing his Taser. That’s a conclusion that even the victim’s attorney implicitly conceded. “It doesn't matter if he was reaching for a Taser or not. At the end of the day, it's what [the officer] did that counts.” Meanwhile nervous BART officials avoided all talk of race and promised what bureau...