Jerry L. Walls

Jerry L. Walls is an American philosopher of religion working in the analytic tradition with a distinctively Wesleyan-Arminian theological orientation. He earned his PhD from the University of Notre Dame and has held positions at Asbury Theological Seminary, Notre Dame, and Houston Christian University, where he serves as Scholar in Residence and Professor of Philosophy. Walls is best known for his trilogy on eschatology—Hell: The Logic of Damnation (1992), Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (2002), and Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation (2011)—in which he defends a libertarian free-will account of damnation and argues for a Protestant-compatible doctrine of purgatory. With David Baggett he has developed a sustained moral argument for theism in Good God (2011) and God and Cosmos (2016), contending that naturalism cannot adequately ground objective moral values, knowledge, and human dignity. Walls co-edited Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God (2018) with Trent Dougherty, gathering analytic defenses of theism inspired by Alvin Plantinga. His positions have drawn critique from Calvinist theologians over his rejection of compatibilist accounts of providence, and from secular moral realists who challenge the claim that theism best explains morality. He is also a vocal critic of theological determinism, particularly in Why I Am Not a Calvinist (2004, with Joseph Dongell).