Ever wonder what C. S. Lewis and Elvis Presley have in common? Me neither! However, Christianity Today has an interesting piece on how a reserved British intellectual with a checkered pedigree became a rock star for evangelicals. If you've ever wondered about the connection between Lewis and the contemporary evangelical movement then C. S. Lewis Superstar is worth a read.

I'm sure most readers of this site have spent time pondering the merits of the philosophical project. First Things has published John Haldane's Gifford Lecture on What Philosophy can do. The lecture was presented this year at the University of Aberdeen. For those unfamiliar with Haldane, he is a leading exponent of analytic Thomism, and Consultor to the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture. He is also professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Ethics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Everyone's favorite free encyclopedia has two new entries likely to be of interest to Problogion readers. The first is William Wainwrigt's entry on Monotheism, and the other is Tim Noone and R.E. Houser's entry on Saint Bonaventure.

Ted (Poston) and I have been thinking lately about the Argument from Desire. We are both big C.S. Lewis fans and the AFD is closely associated with his writings. We are aware of very little academic treatment of the argument and I suppose the reason is that it just sounds to "squishy". It sounds like some kind of Wish Fulfillment scenario. However, we were discussing the argument and were somewhat surprised how hard it is to come up with a solid reason to reject the argument (independently of assuming the falsity of the conclusion). All the first things that popped to mind--e.g., Freud/Marx complaints--turned out, on analysis, to be pretty bad objections (Readers of Prosblogion will likely have read Plantinga on the Freud-and-Marx complaint.) In general, just shouting "Freud!" or "Marx!" does not refute the AFD any more than shouting "Hume!" refutes the argument from design or shouting "Kant!" refutes the ontological argument. So we are wondering what others think is the best objection and what hope there is for an academic presentation of the argument. I'll present one version of the argument below which, though it may not be the strongest form of the argument, is very close to Lewis's own version I think, and it has proved surprisingly resilient in our ponderings (but consider the source!). After the presentation, I'll say a few things about how I think the argument works and then we'll see what you guys think.

If. like me, you didn't get the chance to attend Peter van Inwagen's 2002 Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews, then you will be happy to know the lectures are coming out in print via Oxford University Press, June 2006, under the title The Problem of Evil. Chapters include :

1. The Problem of Evil and the Argument from Evil
   
2. The Idea of God
   
3. Philosophical Failure
   
4. The Global Argument from Evil
   
5. The Global Argument Continued
   
6. The Local Argument from Evil
   
7. The Sufferings of Beasts
   
8. The Hiddenness of God
   

James Rachels 'God and Human Attitudes' in Paul Helm (ed) Divine Commands and Morality (OUP, '81) offered the following argument for the incompatibility of there existing both a being that is worthy of worship and autonomous moral agents.

1. Necessarily, if God exists then He is worthy of worship.
2. It is impossible that some being is worthy of worship.
3. Therefore, it is impossible that God exists.

Phil Quinn, 'Religious Obedience and Moral Autonomy' (also in P. Helm) submits his doubts about premise (2) and (more or less) plausibly reconstructs Rachels' argument for (2) in this way.

4. It is impossible that some being is worthy of worship and there are some moral agents.
5. Necessarily there are some moral agents.
2. Therefore, it is impossible that some being is worthy of worship.

In defense of (4) Rachels commits himself to a Kantian or neo-Kantian conception of moral agency. He says, for instance,

"to be a moral agent is to be an autonomous or self-directed agent . . . The virtuous man is therefore identified with the man of integrity, that is the man who acts according to precepts which he can, on reflection, conscientiously approve in his own heart" (43).

If (4) is true then a genuinely self-directed moral agent could not co-exist with a being that is worthy of worship. More on this puzzling premise in a moment.

I'd like to welcome Prosblogion's latest contributor Michael Almeida. Mike's name should be familiar to regular readers from his substantial past commenting here. Mike is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His published work is in ethics, metaethics, modal logic, and philosophy of religion. Perhaps we'll all get lucky and Mike will treat us to a glimpse of the bevy of work he has forthcoming in publication.

Recently I've been reading Roland Bainton's Hunted Heretic and I was struck by an interesting passage on Trinitarian thought. Given the doctrine as formulated at Nicaea and later Chalcedon the doctrine becomes the going assumption. The question that remains is how such a doctrine can be known, proved, or explained. Bainton asserts that there are three broad schools of thought that emerge.

The first was associated with the name of St. Augustine in the fourth and fifth centuries and claimed that the doctrine cannot be proved, but may be illustrated; the second, stemming from Richard of St. Victor in the twelfth century, averred that the doctrine can be demonstrated; and the third, originating with William of Occam in fourteenth century, claimed that it can neither be demonstrated nor illustrated, but can only be believed.

This is the first time I've seen someone carve up the options available to the Trinitarian in such a way. It seems like an accurate dividing of the logical space. At least it seems to cover most accounts of how one can know or explain the Trinity. I'm wondering if anyone would object to such a characterization of the options open to the Trinitarian? Further, what is the dominate school today?