Brian Leftow has been Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford University since 2002. Prior to that he taught at Fordham University in New York. He is the author of Time and Eternity (Cornell 1991), God and Necessity (OUP 2012), Aquinas on Metaphysics (OUP forthcoming), Anselm on God (OUP forthcoming), and almost 100 articles in philosophy of religion, medieval philosophy and metaphysics.
Perfect Being Theology and the Bible
Perfect being theology (PBT) is partly or wholly a priori. It’s a sort of abstract metaphysics. Why should we expect that a priori theorizing will yield conclusions that apply to the real God of Biblical revelation? The Bible, I argue, teaches that God makes a general revelation available to all humans. I argue that on a reasonable reading of how this would work, it implies that we have natural faculties which are somewhat reliable in drawing about God the sort of conclusions PBT deals in.
Many use "perfect being theology" to denote not just a method of thinking about God, but a set of results medieval thinkers derived partly through that method. Space permitting, I will also argue that parts of the overall Biblical narrative point to some of these results being correct, and the rest is at least compatible with them.
Oliver Crisp, Fuller Theological Seminary
James Diamond, University of Waterloo
Lenn E. Goodman, Vanderbilt University
Zvi Grumet, The Jerusalem College
Moshe Halbertal, NYU and Hebrew University
Ed Halper, University of Georgia
Yoram Hazony, The Herzl Istitute
Brian Leftow, Oxford University
Berel Dov Lerner, Western Galilee College
Michael Miller, University of Nottingham
Alan Mittleman, Jewish Theological Seminary
Heather Ohaneson, Columbia University
Randy Ramal, Claremont Graduate University
Shalom Rosenberg, Hebrew University
Eleonore Stump, Saint Louis University
Alex Sztuden, Independent Scholar
Alan Torrance, University of St. Andrews
Shmuel Trigano, University of Paris X
Joshua Weinstein, The Herzl Institute
Matthew Baddorf, University of Rochester
Pavel Butakov, Russian Academy of Sciences
Yehuda Efune, Rabbi, Chelsea Synagogue of London
Yoshi Fargeon, Bar-Ilan University
Miri Fenton, Conservative Yeshiva
Szilvia Finta, Jewish Theological Seminary, Budapest
Valerie Oved Giovanni, California State University
Justin Hawkins, Yale Divinity School
Ahiad Hazony, Herzog College
Avital Hazony, Ben-Gurion University
Dino Jakusic, The University of Warwick
Joshua Martin, University of Toronto
Michael Miller, University of Nottingham
Stephanie Nordby, University of Oklahoma
Heather Ohaneson, Columbia University
Benjamin Schvarcz, Hebrew University
Chris Shrock, Oklahoma Christian University
Eric Wagner, The Catholic University of America
