Bruce Reichenbach

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• Ph.D. in Philosophy
• Professor Emeritus at Augsburg University

Attempts to resolve the problem of evil often appeal to a greater good, according to which God’s permission of moral and natural evil is justified because (and just in case) the evil that is permitted is necessary for the realization of some greater good. In the extensive litany of greater good theodicies and defenses, the appeal to the greater goo...

James Sterba has constructed a powerful argument for there being a conflict between the presence of evil in the world and the existence of God. I contend that Sterba’s argument depends on a crucial assumption, namely, that God has an obligation to act according to the principle of meticulous providence. I suggest that two of his analogies confirm h...

Over the course of his work, Graham Oppy developed numerous important criticisms of versions of the cosmological argument. Here I am not concerned with his specific criticisms of cosmological arguments but rather with his claim that cosmological arguments per se are not good arguments, for they provide no persuasive reason for believing the conclus...

A central issue in the continuing discussion of the relation of ethics to religion concerns the divine command theory of ethics. Repeated are a number of charges: the divine command theory makes the standard of right and wrong arbitrary; 1 it traps the defender of the theory in a vicious circle; 2 it violates moral autonomy; 3 it is an infantile re...

In his recent book Is a Good God Logically Possible? and article by the same name, James Sterba argued that the existence of significant and horrendous evils, both moral and natural, is incompatible with the existence of God. He advances the discussion by invoking three moral requirements and by creating an analogy with how the just state would add...

The alleged conflict between religion and science most pointedly focuses on what it is to be human. Western philosophical thought regarding this has progressed through three broad stages: mind/body dualism, Neo‐Darwinism, and most recently strong artificial intelligence (AI). I trace these views with respect to their relation to Christian views of...

William Alston proposed an understanding of religious experience modeled after the triadic structure of sense perception. However, a perceptual model falters because of the unobservability of God as the object of religious experience. To reshape Alston’s model of religious experience as an observational practice we utilize Dudley Shapere’s distinct...

Questions of belief, and agency over personal belief, abound as individuals claim to have the right to believe whatever they so choose. In a carefully constructed argument, Bruce Reichenbach contends that while individuals have direct control over belief, they are obligated to believe-and purposely seek-the truth. Though the nature of truth and bel...

Religion, Realism, and ModelsInstrumental Religious NonrealismEpistemic Religious NonrealismReligious RealismModels and RealityWhy Does It Matter?Notes

In his recent book on revelation, Jorge Gracia rejects the authorial intention view of textual interpretation, arguing that the only interpretation that makes sense for texts regarded as divinely revealed is theological interpretation. Both his position and the authorial view face the problem of the Hermeneutical Circle. I contend that the argument...

The recent fad of removing glacial boulders from native Midwest prairie to create walls for urban wildflower gardens provides the context for thinking about how a theistic stewardship ethic addresses the environment. The three commands of Genesis 1 and 2 provide the basis for a theistic stewardship ethic, where God as the Creator/Landowner establis...

Genesis 1 presents in cosmogonic form a theological-political narrative justifying God's claim to whatever exists, especially to the land on which the Pentateuch focuses. Behind this expression of a royal land ideology lie presuppositions about divine kingship and the land. I detail how this in-terpretation helps us understand the first creation ac...

Richard Swinburne claims that Christ's death has no efficacy unless people appropriate it. According to religious inclusivists, God can be encountered and his grace manifested in various ways through diverse religions. Salvation is available for everyone, regardless of whether they have heard about Christ's sacrifice. This poses the question whethe...

The doctrine of karma continues to be significant because it provides an explanation for both pain, suffering and misfortune on the one hand, and pleasure, happiness and good fortune on the other. Consequently, an assessment of the success of the doctrine in resolving the problem of good and evil will go a long way in enabling us to evaluate the do...

Our discussion of the law of karma would be incomplete without consideration of the relation of the law of karma to human liberation. Our current existence, governed by the law of karma, must be transcended into something higher. The goal of life is liberation from the misery and suffering which accompany the cycle of rebirths. This can only occur...

It is reasoned that ‘if the law of Karma is rejected, the moral law itself will have to be rejected’.1 To accept the moral law, which affirms that acts are objectively right and wrong, is to accept the law of karma. In other words, acceptance of the moral law is sufficient for accepting the law of karma, whereas acceptance of the law of karma is ne...

According to Hinduism and Jainism, we can experience the effects of our karma in subsequent lives because there is a self which survives death and bears its karma into the next life. Throughout our discussion we have referred or alluded to the existence of a persistent self and in chapter 4 we considered it as touching on the question of human free...

To achieve understanding of a concept, it is often helpful to discern something of its origin. However, considerations of origins can be misleading, for concepts change both in content and function. Hence, to avoid any taint of the genetic fallacy, origins must be considered for the insights they can render, not for any evaluative conclusions which...

In the previous chapters we raised questions concerning the relation of the law of karma to the law of universal causation. In this chapter it will be our intent first to clarify the relation between these two laws. Then we will inquire concerning the epistemological status of the law of karma. Is the law of karma a convenient fiction which, though...

A common criticism of the doctrine of karma is that it entails fatalism. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan writes, ‘Unfortunately, the theory of Karma became confused with fatality in India when man himself grew feeble and was disinclined to do his best’.1 Another philosopher writes, ‘If we are justified in our acceptance of the causal dogma, there does not...

Buddhist literature follows in the Vedic tradition of avowing belief in life after death. What is not so clear is the sense in which this belief is to be understood. Even contemporary Buddhist authors give widely differing views. For example, on the one hand immortality is likened to the vital energy which, flowing from time immemorial, is passed o...

In the previous chapter we raised the question of the relation of the law of karma to justice. Two issues—whether transfer of merit is possible and consistent with justice, and whether the law of karma is a juridical or moral law—remain outstanding. We shall take them up in this chapter, which is a continuation of chapter 9.

According to the law of karma, our actions have consequences which affect not only our dispositions and tendencies (saṃskāras), but also the non-dispositional aspects of our being (for example, our genetic make-up, our physical characteristics, our social status at birth, our length of life) and our environment. The environment is affected in such...

KIE The author examines various claimed differences between active and passive euthanasia and, if there are differences, whether they are morally significant. He refutes arguments based on acting vs. not acting, intention, double effect, cause of death, and natural law theory. Reichenbach proposes that the most helpful distinction is the one betwee...

To sum up, we have argued that if deliberation is incompatible with (fore)knowing what one is going to do at the time of the deliberation, then God cannot deliberate. However, this thesis cannot be used to show either that God cannot act intentionally or that human persons cannot deliberate. Further, we have suggested that though omniscience is inc...

In a recent article in Religious Studies, Professor P. W. Gooch attempts to wean the orthodox Christian from anthropological materialism by consideration of the question of the nature of the post-mortem person in the resurrection. He argues that the view that the resurrected person is a psychophysical organism who is in some physical sense the same...

The so-called 'problem of evir can be posed in both an inductive and a deductive form. In his inductive argument from evil the atheologian I contends that the variety and profusion of evil found in our world, though not logically inconsistent with God's existence, makes it improbable or unlikely that God exists. For example, Hume writes, ... (A)s (...

In an attempt to make the idea of surviving one's own death in a disembodied state intelligible, H. H. Price has presented a possible description of what the afterlife might be like for a disembodied self or consciousness. Price suggests that the world of the disembodied self might be a kind of dream or image world. In it he would replace his prese...

Traditionally, when man was viewed as a psycho-physical unity, life after death was deemed quite impossible, particularly in the face of universal human mortality and inevitable bodily corruption. However, some modern anthropologically monistic philosophers, including most notably John Hick, have argued that life after death is possible.

Ph. D. (Philosophy) - Northwestern University, 1968.

We perhaps have no better way of engaging in theological reflection on institutions and their potential contributions and actual obligations to society than through a pair of glasses with two important lenses: citizenship and the Kingdom of God. Unpacking the concept of citizenship enables us to comprehend how institutions should connect to the soc...