Ex-Voto Publishing
One of the most famous speeches of all time is a sermon about hell, namely, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards. Its fame is due largely to its literary qualities, particularly its graphic language. It is rich with passages like the following. “That world of misery, that lake of burning […]
Jerry Walls, Hell: The Logic of Damnation Read More »
This is a [treatment of] the theoretical problem of evil as it appears in the Western philosophical and theological traditions.… [It is] written from the perspective of the “process” philosophical and theological thought inspired primarily by Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne… [C]ertain assumptions about the nature of God’s power that made the problem so
David Ray Griffin, A Process Theodicy Read More »
The English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) is regarded as one of the leading Victorian poets for his innovations with prosody (the use of syllables, meter, rhyme, and the pattern of words in poetry). Prone to depression and struggles with religious doubt, Hopkins’ melancholy found expression in his ‘sonnets of desolation.’ Among them is
Gerard Hopkins, “Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord” Read More »
What is the problem of evil? The sterile, academic language of philosophy is often used to explain it, but one is hard-pressed to find a better description of the visceral nature of the problem of evil than that provided by the great Russian novelist Fodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881) in The Bothers Karamazov. In a chapter titled “Rebellion,”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, “Rebellion” Read More »
The Scottish philosopher and essayist David Hume (1711–1776) is known for his criticisms of various claims to religious knowledge, as well as for his naturalistic explanations of the origins of religious belief. In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, published posthumously in 1779, three philosophers—Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes—debate different arguments for the existence of God, along with various
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Read More »
The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 is one of the most significant earthquakes in recorded history, killing tens of thousands in Lisbon, thousands more elsewhere in Portugal, and additional thousands in Spain and Morocco. While other earthquakes have resulted in more victims, none have produced greater intellectual shockwaves than the one in Lisbon. In the months
Voltaire, “Poem on the Lisbon Disaster” Read More »
Sextus Empiricus was a Greek Pyrrhonist, a school of philosophical skepticism founded by Pyrrho in the fourth century BC. Sextus promoted a form of philosophical inquiry called the “skeptic way,” which involves counterposing two or more credible but seemingly inconsistent assertions in order to demonstrate the limits of logic. The excerpt below, taken from the
Sextus Empiricus, “God” Read More »