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tion of the cycle of reconciliation. Complicating things
further, Origen s conception of the Trinity is subordi-
nationist, with the Father being the supreme deity, and
the Son and Spirit descending derivations. Finally, Ori-
gen argued that one of the logika (that of Jesus) remained
united with the Word when all others fell away. Accord-
ing to Origen, the incarnation just is this intimate unity of
Word and Jesus, an explanation that surely appears adop-
tionistic. Hence, while Origen s theology is an impressive
intellectual achievement, it ranges far from what would
become the standards of orthodoxy. Among Origen s
other achievements are the Hexapla, a landmark in tex-
tual criticism, and Against Celsus, an impressive apolo-
getic response to a leading pagan critic of the Church.
See Augustine of Hippo; creation; incarnation; Neo-
platonism; Trinity
Further reading: Origen 1857, 1878, 1936 and 1980;
Trigg 1998
original sin see sin
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134 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY A Z
P
Paley, William (1743 1805): An Anglican bishop and apolo-
gist, Paley, while not an original thinker, was gifted in the
art of writing popular presentations of apologetics, as in
A View of the Evidence of Christianity (1794), which was
required reading at Cambridge University for decades.
Today Paley s most discussed work is Natural Theology
(1802), which includes his famous defence of the argu-
ment to design. As Paley puts it, if you are walking across
a heath and encounter a watch, you would surely con-
clude that it had been designed. But the human eye is an
even more exquisite example of craftsmanship and there-
fore likewise requires an inference to a designer. Paley s
argument would receive a sharp challenge from the pur-
ported elimination of teleology in Darwinian evolution
as captured in Richard Dawkins s memorable book title
The Blind Watchmaker.
See argument from/to design; evolution; God, argu-
ments for the existence of; theology, natural
Further reading: Paley 1819, 1825 and 1849
panentheism see pantheism
Pannenberg, Wolfhart (1928 ): A Lutheran theologian whose
overriding concern has been the reestablishment of the ra-
tionality of Christianity in the light of the challenge of the
Enlightenment, Pannenberg sees Barth s response as inad-
equate and so has reinterpreted revelation as public and
historical in nature (Revelation as History (1961)). This
reveals one aspect of the Hegelian influence in Pannen-
berg s thought. Further, he denies that faith can produce
knowledge; instead, knowledge of the risen Christ must
come through textual criticism and historical research
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CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY A Z 135
(Jesus  God and Man (1968)). Indeed, Pannenberg views
all claims to knowledge as provisional hypotheses prior
to the end of history. On these grounds he seeks to estab-
lish the provisional rationality of theology. This method
leads to Pannenberg s anthropological study, which seeks
to establish the innate human capacity to receive reve-
lation. While interpretations of Pannenberg as holding
to evidentialism seem plausible, the oft-stated criticism
that his views of knowledge and epistemic justification
are foundationalist is misguided as he is probably bet-
ter understood as holding a form of coherentism. Pan-
nenberg s three-volume Systematic Theology (1991 8) is
among the most important theological works of recent
decades, though his most philosophical work is his The-
ology and the Philosophy of Science (1976).
See Barth, Karl; evidentialism; foundationalism; rea-
son; revelation
Further reading: Pannenberg 1968, 1976, 1985 and
1991 8; Shults 1999
pantheism: Although pantheism may be characterised
roughly as the view that God is everything, the word
 pantheism in fact refers to two separate positions: (1)
everything is a part of God and God is identical with
the totality of what exists; (2) everything is identical
with God. The second view, a form of absolute monism,
is paradoxical if not incoherent, and is held by some
religious traditions, most notably the Hindu tradition
of Advaita Vedanta. A closely related concept is pan-
entheism, the view that God is in everything. This view
sees all things as divine, but denies that God is identical
with the world, seeing it rather as a proper part of God,
analogous to the relation of a body to the human person.
Panentheism is found in process theology as well as in
the writings of a number of theologians today working
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136 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY A Z
in feminism and science and religion. Pantheism and
panentheism are not always easy to distinguish: Hegel,
for instance, has been identified with both.
See creation; Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich; miracle;
philosophy, process; theology, process
Further reading: Hunt 1970; Jantzen 1984; Leslie
2001; Levine 1994
particulars see universals
Pascal, Blaise (1623 62): A French mathematician, philoso-
pher and Christian apologist, Pascal became a defender
of the Christian faith and, in particular, of its Jansenist
form (against the Jesuits) after a religious experience in
1654 turned his primary focus from mathematics and
science to theology and apologetics. While never com-
pleted, his defence of the Christian faith, posthumously
collected as the Pensées (Thoughts) (1670), provides a
very different approach from the dominant Cartesianism
of the day. Rather than seek certainty, Pascal stressed
the tenuous nature of existence, referring to man as but
 a thinking reed . He also recognised the challenge of
scepticism and argued that the proofs for the existence
of God fail to be compelling. Even so, he believed that
Christianity has superior explanatory power, as in the
doctrine of original sin, which captures both the dignity
and tragedy of human existence. His apologetic brilliance
is found in the famous Wager, a trailblazing model of
modern decision theory. In the Wager, Pascal argues
that even if the evidence for and against Christianity is
equal, we ought to believe in God because if we lose, we [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]