Paul K Moser

• PhD in Philosophy
• Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago

Paul’s theology of triumph in glory is widely neglected among interpreters. The neglect hinders understanding of how, in his thought, the resurrection of Jesus is related to the cross of Jesus. This article offers an explanation of their relation on the basis of Paul’s perspective on divine glory. It defends the intrinsic value of both the resurrec...

A Christian approach to suffering, sin, and evil cannot offer now a full theodicy. We now ‘know in part’ only regarding divine purposes in allowing suffering, sin, and evil. We can clarify instead how God interacts in righteousness with people as their God of promise and voucher in the midst of suffering, sin, and evil. To that end, this article il...

This article proposes an underappreciated value for traditional natural theology and its familiar arguments for the existence of God, without endorsing the soundness or the rational cogency of these arguments. Famously, Aquinas and Kant represent two extremes, with Aquinas endorsing some natural theology arguments for God’s existence and Kant oppos...

How can the Biblical God be the Lord and King who, being typically unseen and even self-veiled at times, authoritatively leads people for divine purposes? This article’s main thesis is that the answer is in divine moral leading via human moral experience of God (of a kind to be clarified). The Hebrew Bible speaks of God as ‘king,’ including for a t...

Nihilism states that there is no sustainer, such as God, of lasting purpose, meaning, or hope for human life, even if people sometimes create their own short-term purpose, meaning, or hope. Philosophers who are atheists typically support nihilism of that sort, if only because they lack the resources for lasting meaning. What kind of evidence would...

This article explains ‘the glory of God’ in the context of two Biblical claims seemingly at odds with each other: God does not share divine glory with humans, and God does share divine glory with them. The article offers a resolution of the apparent conflict on the basis of a Biblical conception of divine glory as inexhaustible perfect goodness tha...

Many people in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic monotheistic traditions testify to their experience of being commanded by God to do something or to be a certain way. Is this kind of testimony from experience credible in some cases, and, if so, on what ground? The main thesis of this article is that it is credible in some cases and a suitable ground i...

The communion (koinōnia) of the Spirit calls for moral rapport with God, based on the reception of divine righteousness in the "fruit of the Spirit" among humans. This article explains the centrality of such moral rapport to the koinōnia of the Spirit, on the basis of insights from the book of Genesis, some of the Hebrew psalmists, and the apostle...

How, according to the best Biblical theodicy, does God justify God’s allowing extreme suffering and evil? According to this article, the Biblical God is Lord of the future as well as the present and uses the future to fulfill divine promises to humans. The future fulfillment, coupled with present divine proximity to humans, includes restoring and s...

The recurring biblical idea of ‘God with us’ is underdeveloped in the literature. This article corrects for that deficiency. The God of Jews and Christians offers to ‘be with us’ but is also famous for moral conflict with humans, from the beginning to the end of the scriptural writings. In this regard, at least, we have a marked contrast with the t...

Scholars of the Bible have long sought a theme that can identify substantial unity in the various Biblical writings without disregarding their undeniable diversity. In this context, scholars have explored the nature and limits of Biblical inspiration in considerable detail, but the moral inspiration of humans by God has received relatively little a...

Many philosophers and theologians try to add credibility to Christian faith by means of philosophical arguments and explanations. There are two main ways to pursue this aim, and one way is arguably more defensible than the other, at least from the perspective of the apostle Paul. Philosophers and theologians who hold that Paul has a contribution to...

If God exists and is perfectly good, God tries to guide people. A twofold question then arises: How does God (try to) guide people, and to what end? Problems of divine guidance for humans, according to this volume, are real and serious, but they are manageable once we clarify the kind of God at issue. According to the volume's main thesis, if God h...

In this book, Paul Moser explains how self-sacrificial righteousness of a reparative kind is at the heart of Paul's gospel of God. He also shows how divine self-sacrifice authenticates that gospel via human reciprocity toward God in reconciliation. A basis for this reciprocity lies in a teaching of ancient Judaism that humans are to reciprocate tow...

This article’s main thesis is that divine self‐disclosure to humans is best understood in terms of manifested filial values with a distinctive moral intention aimed at cultivating righteousness. To that end, it identifies and clarifies a neglected problem of guided goodness and its significance for God’s self‐disclosure in manifested filial values....

Various New Testament writings assume an important role for hope in God. The role of eschatology in those writings stems from a role for hope regarding what God will accomplish by way of redemption. The apostle Paul goes further to identify a widely neglected evidential ground for hope in God. This ground is in divine agapē toward humans in their e...

Some people arguably perceive God at times, but others do not. So, we should ask whether God hides from some people but not others, relative to their perceptual experience. This essay identifies some important features of such hiding relative to one’s perceiving God. It proposes that humans are not in a position to remove divine hiding from their p...

Some of the Biblical narratives seem inconsistent regarding human fear of God. For instance, according to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus commanded fear of God, but he also evidently commanded ‘Do not be afraid’ in relation to God. To block inconsistency, this article clarifies two kinds of motivational fear of God: conforming fear and nonconforming fear rela...

Sensory language is commonly used to describe human encounters with the divine. Scripture, for example, employs perceptual language like ‘taste and see that the Lord is good’, ‘hear the word of the Lord’, and promises that ‘the pure in heart will see God’. Such statements seem to point to certain features of human cognition that make perception-lik...

This entry identifies some main approaches to divine hiddenness, and outlines an approach that makes some sense of divine hiddenness in the light of the moral character and purposes of a redemptive God.

The most prominent obstacle to hope and faith in God is an experienced world evidently at odds with the goodness and thus the reality of God. This obstacle gets traction when combined with the assumption, found in many Biblical narratives, that God merits worship and trust from humans owing to impeccable divine goodness. This article examines wheth...

Our expectations for human experience of God can obscure the reality and the presence of such experience for us. They can lead us to look in the wrong places for God’s presence, and they can lead us not to look at all. This article counters the threat of misleading expectations regarding God, while acknowledging a role for diving hiding from humans...

In this book, Paul Moser explores Jesus' role as God's filial inquirer and clarifies a method of inquiry regarding Jesus, one that offers a compelling explanation regarding his experiential impact and his audience's response. Moser's method values the roles of history and moral/religious experience in inquiry about him, and it saves inquirers from...

Biblical theology should be grounded in a broad perspective, an Überblick, on the character of God as the main actor in biblical history. Without such a perspective, we will lose sight of what kind of agent motivates the main story-line of the Bible. If our perspective is inadequate, we will fail to recognize how God works in history, including bib...

What motivated and empowered Jesus to go, willingly, to Jerusalem to undergo suffering and death? He could have chosen to avoid the fatal confrontation in Jerusalem, but he intended to endure it, despite its tragic end. This situation calls for an explanation in terms of what empowered him in carrying out his intention while facing suffering and de...

In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard, writing as Johannes Climacus, famously distinguishes two kinds of religiousness, kind A and kind B. He claims that, even though kind A is basic to kind B, including as represented in Christian religious commitment , kind A both has God 'in its ground' and 'can be present in paganism' that is a...

A ‘phenomenology of God’ will characterize human experience of God, at least regarding some of its distinctive aspects. This article contends that theism acknowledging a God worthy of worship owes its ultimate credibility to a morally relevant phenomenology of God, given the centrality of God’s unique moral character and will in all things divine....

If we know anything about Jesus of Nazareth, we know that he had a message about the “kingdom of God.” The synoptic Gospels confirm this, if they confirm anything. A challenge arises, however, in our identifying what Jesus thought of the arrival of this kingdom, especially regarding its timing and its role for divine judgment, and what he considere...

The New Testament synoptic Gospels suggest an epistemology exemplified by Jesus in Gethsemane and in his use of parables. This article explains the epistemology in terms of reconciliatory evidence and knowledge of God as sought by Jesus. The synoptic Gospels use Jesus’s kind of obedience in Gethsemane to characterize a receptive human mode for God...

If we know anything about Jesus of Nazareth, we know that he had a message about the "kingdom of God." The synoptic Gospels confirm this, if they confirm anything. A challenge arises, however, in our identifying what Jesus thought of the arrival of this kingdom, especially regarding its timing and its role for divine judgment, and what he considere...

Cambridge Core - Social and Cultural Anthropology - The Cambridge Companion to Religious Experience - edited by Paul K. Moser

This article examines the kind of power available to a God worthy of worship, in connection with the prospect for a full theodicy for the world’s suffering and evil. It portrays how such a God would seek to relate to people with uncoerced reconciliation to God as a gift having definite expectations of them. To that end, God would be elusive and hid...

This article examines the kind of power available to a God worthy of worship, in connection with the prospect for a full theodicy for the world's suffering and evil. It portrays how such a God would seek to relate to people with uncoerced reconciliation to God as a gift having definite expectations of them. To that end, God would be elusive and hid...

Cambridge Core - Religion: General Interest - Understanding Religious Experience - by Paul K. Moser

What is distinctive about Christian philosophy? The history of Christian philosophy does not offer a consensus answer, and much of this history fails to offer a definite answer. One result is a widespread lack of understanding of what this Christian discipline consists of. In this chapter, Paul K. Moser contends that genuine Christian philosophy is...

This chapter focuses on some epistemic concepts and their bearing on theism. It considers the nature of belief both as assent and as a disposition involving trust. It also characterizes foundational evidence of God's reality in terms of divine self-manifestation in human moral conscience, whereby a unique kind of agapē-conviction can arise.

Cambridge Core - Philosophy of Science - Pascal's Wager - edited by Paul Bartha

Theologians, Biblical scholars, philosophers of religion, and others often confront something called ‘Christian philosophy’. It is typically left unclear, however, what such a philosophy consists in, or even what makes such a philosophy distinctive. This article provides some needed clarity by introducing a Christian philosophy of the cross, that i...

Philosophical debates about "the meaning of life" or, less ambitiously, "the meaning in life" include questions about whether there is an overarching, all-inclusive purpose for human life. The debate does not concern whether everyone knowingly has such a purpose, because it is obvious that not everyone does. Instead, the debate concerns whether suc...

Philosophy of religion suffers from inadequate attention to the specific moral character of a transcendent God worthy of worship. This deficiency often results from an unduly abstract conception of a transcendent God, including correspondingly abstract notions of divine goodness and power. A Christian approach to God has a unique solution to this p...

This article neutralizes the intellectual problem of evil regarding divine culpability. God, it contends, is morally permitted to hide from humans (a statement of) the full divine purpose in allowing unjust suffering and evil in human lives, because it is morally too profound for them to understand properly now in a way that avoids counterproductiv...

Diversity and disagreement in the religious beliefs among many religious people seem here to stay, however much they bother some inquirers. Even so, the latter inquirers appear not to be similarly bothered by diversity and disagreement in the scientific beliefs among many scientists. They sometimes propose that we should take religious beliefs to b...

For many centuries philosophers have been discussing the problem of evil - one of the greatest problems of intellectual history. There are many facets to the problem, and for students and scholars unfamiliar with the vast literature on the subject, grasping the main issues can be a daunting task. This Companion provides a stimulating introduction t...

The God Relationship Flyer

In this book, Paul Moser proposes a new approach to inquiry about God, including a new discipline of the ethics for inquiry about God. It is an ethics for human attitudes and relationships as well as actions in inquiry, and it includes human responsibility for seeking evidence that involves a moral priority for humans. Such ethics includes an ongoi...

In ‘Undermining the case for evidential atheism’, Religious Studies , 48 (2012), 83–93, I challenged positive evidential atheism on the basis of some considerations from divine hiding, if God exists. Scott Aikin, in ‘Does divine hiding undermine Positive Evidential Atheism?’, Religious Studies , 52 (2016), 205–212, attempts to rehabilitate positive...

This collection of new essays written by an international team of scholars is a groundbreaking examination of the problem of divine hiddenness, one of the most dynamic areas in current philosophy of religion. Together, the essays constitute a wide-ranging dialogue on the problem. They balance atheistic and theistic standpoints, and they bring to be...

REASON AND FAITH IN GOD The familiar topic of " faith and reason " ranks among the most confusing in all of philosophy and theology. A large part of the problem results from widespread use of an unclear notion of faith, and the corresponding notion of reason likewise suffers from lack of clarity. So, we are often left wondering what the key issue i...

Many Christians seek to understand how their Christian faith relates to what goes by the name "philosophy." They eventually see that no single well-defined subject goes by the name "philosophy." It does not help matters that the term "philosophy" is among the most variably used terms in the English language, even among academic philosophers. This r...

The question of God's existence seems not to go away, even for highly educated atheists. In addition, the question of God's existence seems not be conclusively settled, either pro or con, by sound deductive or inductive (including abductive) arguments for any sizeable group free of prior commitments on the question. Why is this? Might this indicate...

In “Method and Madness in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy of Religion” Klaas Kraay offers some methodological considerations that lead to a taxonomy and a larger research project for an axiology of theism. This reply identifies some crucial vagueness and ambiguity in the taxonomy and project, and makes three constructive recommendations for improv...

This article identifies intellectualism as the view that if we simply think hard enough about our evidence, we get an adequate answer to the question of whether God exists. The article argues against intellectualism, and offers a better alternative involving a kind of volitional evidentialism. If God is redemptive in virtue of seeking divine -human...

Philosophers have long worked with conceptions of God inadequate to a God genuinely worthy of worship. A key inadequacy is the omission of a notion of divine severity appropriate to the idea of a God worthy of worship. As a result, many philosophers have misguided expectations for God, that is, expectations that fail to match what would be God's re...

Evidential atheism, as espoused by various philosophical atheists, recommends belief that God does not exist on the basis of not just the evidence of which we are aware, but also our overall available evidence. This article identifies a widely neglected problem from potential surprise evidence that undermines an attempt to give a cogent justificati...

This book discusses a range of central philosophical disputes about knowledge, objectivity, meaning, physicalism, and practical rationality. Its lessons about reasons and explanation affect all areas of theoretical philosophy, and challenge common philosophical assumptions about objectivity, realism, and physicalism. The book explains how various p...

What, if anything, is the bearing of flux, or impermanence, as found in this world on the case for the Jewish-Christian God? This chapter argues that the bearing is positive rather than negative, given the redemptive character and aims of this mysterious God. It proposes that a distinctive agape struggle involving humans and God is an elusive indic...

A system of claims of a particular kind may sometimes be called a religion, and sometimes a human commitment of a particular kind may be called a religious commitment. In general, we might say that a commitment is religious for a person if and only if the commitment is intrinsic (that is, not merely instrumental toward something else) and is intend...

Th e epistemology of monotheism off ered by philosophers has given inadequate attention to the kind of foundational evidence to be expected of a personal God whose moral character is agapeic, or perfectly loving, toward all other agents. Th is article counters this defi ciency with the basis of a theistic epis-temology that accommodates the distinc...

Philosophers have often misunderstood Kierkegaard's views on the nature and purposes of God due to a fascination with his earlier, pseudonymous works. We examine many of Kierkegaard's later works with the aim of setting forth an accurate view on this matter. The portrait of God that emerges is a personal and fiercely loving God with whom humans can...

Philosophers and others have long tried to formulate an explanation of the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge. Epistemology is the philosophical project of formulating such an explanation. It has occupied philosophers at least since the time of Plato, and it continues to provide a central field of study in contemporary philosophy. If we claim t...

This book explores the role of divine severity in the character and wisdom of God, and the flux and difficulties of human life in relation to divine salvation. Much has been written on problems of evil, but the matter of divine severity has received relatively little attention. Paul K. Moser discusses the function of philosophy, evidence and miracl...

The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology contains work by today's leading figures in the field of epistemology. The articles function not only as a survey of key areas, but as original scholarship on a range of vital topics. In the concept-sensitive hands of philosophers, epistemology focuses on the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge. It examines th...

If God exists, where can we find adequate evidence for God’s existence? In this book, Paul Moser offers a new perspective on the evidence for God that centers on a morally robust version of theism that is cognitively resilient. The resulting evidence for God is not speculative, abstract, or casual. Rather, it is morally and existentially challengin...