The Existence and Nature of God

This edited volume assembles significant contemporary philosophical investigations into classical arguments for God's existence and divine attributes, representing a crucial intervention in analytic philosophy of religion during its late twentieth-century renaissance. Freddoso brings together leading philosophers who subject traditional theistic proofs to rigorous logical scrutiny while engaging with both historical sources and modern analytical methods.

The collection addresses perennial questions through contemporary philosophical lenses, examining ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments with unprecedented analytical precision. Contributors investigate whether these classical proofs can withstand modern logical analysis and scientific knowledge. The volume particularly focuses on modal logic's application to necessary existence arguments, the principle of sufficient reason's role in cosmological reasoning, and probability theory's relevance to design arguments. These investigations reveal how analytical philosophy transforms traditional natural theology through formal logical tools unavailable to earlier thinkers.

Beyond existence arguments, the volume examines divine attributes and their coherence. Contributors analyze whether omnipotence, omniscience, and perfect goodness form a consistent set, addressing paradoxes like the stone too heavy for God to lift or the compatibility of divine foreknowledge with human freedom. The collection engages seriously with the problem of evil, examining whether suffering's existence undermines theistic belief. These discussions demonstrate philosophy of religion's movement beyond mere proof-attempting toward conceptual analysis of theism's internal consistency.

The work's significance lies in its methodological approach and timing. Published when analytical philosophy of religion was establishing itself as a rigorous subdiscipline, it helped legitimate religious questions within analytical philosophy's predominantly secular environment. Contributors employ the same logical rigor applied to questions in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science, treating theistic claims as serious philosophical propositions deserving careful analysis rather than dismissal.

The volume engages critically with both medieval scholastics like Aquinas and Anselm and contemporary critics of theism. It demonstrates how analytical tools can clarify traditional arguments' logical structure while revealing previously hidden assumptions. This approach neither uncritically accepts nor dismissively rejects theistic arguments but subjects them to careful philosophical examination. The collection's lasting influence appears in subsequent debates where its analytical framework became standard for addressing God's existence and nature within academic philosophy.