Papers by Robert M. Adams

Articles

• “Anticipation and Consummation,” Theology Today, 20 (1963), 196-211.
• “The Logical Structure of Anselm’s Arguments,” The Philosophical Review, 80 (1971), 28-54.
• “Has It Been Proved That All Real Existence Is Contingent?” American Philosophical Quarterly, 8 (1971), 284-291.
• “Must God Create the Best?” The Philosophical Review, 81 (1972), 317-332.
• “Berkeley’s ‘Notion’ of Spiritual Substance,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 55 (1973), 47-69.
• “Middle Knowledge” (an abstract), The Journal of Philosophy, 70 (1973), 552-554.
• “A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness,” in Gene Outka and John P. Reeder, Jr., eds., Religion and Morality (Doubleday Anchor, 1973), pp. 318-347.
• “Theories of Actuality,” Noûs, 8 (1974), 211-231.
• “Where Do Our Ideas Come From? - Descartes vs. Locke,” in Stephen P. Stich, ed., Innate Ideas (University of California Press, 1975), pp. 71-87.
• “Kierkegaard’s Arguments against Objective Reasoning in Religion,” The Monist, Vol. 60, No. 2 (April, 1976), 228-243.
• “Motive Utilitarianism,” The Journal of Philosophy, 73 (1976), 467-481.
• “Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil,” The American Philosophical Quarterly, 14 (1977), 109-117.
• “Critical Study: The Nature of Necessity (A. Plantinga),” Noûs, 11 (1977), 175-191.
• “Leibniz’s Theories of Contingency,” Rice University Studies, 63, No. 4 (Fall 1977), pp. 1-41.
• “Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity,” The Journal of Philosophy, 76 (1979), 5-26.
• “Existence, Self-Interest, and the Problem of Evil,” Noûs, 13 (1979), 53-65.
• “Divine Command Metaethics Modified Again,” Journal of Religious Ethics, 7 (1979), 66-79.
• “Autonomy and Theological Ethics,” Religious Studies, 15 (1979), pp. 191-194.
• “Benevolence and Pleasure,” The Reformed Journal, 29 (1979), 13-14.
• “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief,” in C.F. Delaney, ed., Rationality and Religious Belief (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 116-140.
• “Pure Love,” Journal of Religious Ethics, 8, No. 1 (1980), pp. 83-99.
• “The Annointing at Bethany,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin, 1980, pp. 51-53.
• “Actualism and Thisness,” Synthese, 49 (1981), 3-41.
• “Phenomenalism and Corporeal Substance in Leibniz,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 8 (1983), 217-257.
• “Knowledge and Self: A Correspondence between Robert M. Adams and Hector-Neri Castaneda,” in James E. Tomberlin, ed., Agent, Language and the Structure of the World: Essays Presented to Hector-Neri Castaneda, with His Replies (Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), pp. 293-309.
• “Divine Necessity,” Journal of Philosophy, 80 (1983), 741-752.
• “The Virtue of Faith,” Faith and Philosophy, Vol. I, (1984), 3-15.
• “Saints,” The Journal of Philosophy, 81(1984), 392-401.
• “Predication, Truth, and Trans-World Identity in Leibniz,” in How Things Are: Studies in Predication and the History and Philosophy of Science, ed. by James Bogen and James E. McGuire (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985), pp. 235-283.
• “Plantinga on the Problem of Evil,” in James Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen, eds., Alvin Plantinga (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985), pp. 225-255.
• “Involuntary Sins,” The Philosophical Review, 94 (1985), 3-31.
• “The Problem of Total Devotion,” in Robert Audi and William Wainwright, eds., Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment (Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 169-94.
• “Time and Thisness,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 11 (1986), 315-329.
• “Berkeley and Epistemology,” in Ernest Sosa, ed. Essays on the Philosophy of George Berkeley (Reidel, 1987), pp. 143-61.
• “The Leap of Faith,” first published as ch. 3 (pp. 42-47) of Adams, The Virtue of Faith (1987).
• “Flavors, Colors, and God,” first published as ch. 16 (pp.243-262) of Adams, The Virtue of Faith (1987).
• “Divine Commands and the Social Nature of Obligation,” Faith and Philosophy, 4 (1987), 262-275.
• “Vocation,” Faith and Philosophy, 4 (1987), 448-62.
• “Presumption and the Necessary Existence of God,” Noûs, 22 (1988), 19-32.
• “Common Projects and Moral Virtue,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 13 (1988), 297-307.
• “Christian Liberty,” in Thomas V. Morris, ed., Philosophy and the Christian Faith (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 151-71.
• “Reply: Cobb on Ultimate Reality,” in Linda J. Tessier, ed., Concepts of the Ultimate (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 52-54.
• “Should Ethics Be More Impersonal? A Critical Notice of Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons,” The Philosophical Review, 98 (1989), 439-84.
• “Reply to Kvanvig,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 50 (Dec. 1989), 299-301.
• “The Knight of Faith,” Faith and Philosophy, 7 (1990), 383-95.
• “An Anti-Molinist Argument,” Philosophical Perspectives, 5 (1991), 343-53.
• “Platonism and Naturalism: Options for a Theocentric Ethics,” in Joseph Runzo, ed., Ethics, Religion, and the Good Society: New Directions in a Pluralistic World (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), pp. 22-42.
• “Idolatry and the Invisibility of God,” in Shlomo Biderman and Ben Ami Scharfstein, eds., Interpretation in Religion (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), pp. 39-52.
• “Miracles, Laws of Nature, and Causation,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 66 (1992): 207-224.
• “Religious Ethics in a Pluralistic Society,” in Gene Outka and John P. Reeder, Jr., eds., Prospects for a Common Morality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 93-113.
• “Religion after Babel,” in Arvind Sharma, ed., God, Truth, and Reality: Essays in Honour of John Hick (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 62-71.
• “Truth and Subjectivity,” in Eleanore Stump, ed., Reasoned Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology in Honor of Norman Kretzmann (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 5-41.
• “Prospects for a Metaethical Argument for Theism: A Response to Stephen J. Sullivan,” in Journal of Religious Ethics, 21 (1993): 313-18.
• “Form und Materie bei Leibniz: die mittleren Jahre,” in Studia Leibnitiana, 25 (1993): 132-52.
• “Leibniz and the Limits of Mechanism,” in Leibniz und Europa: VI. Internationaler Leibniz-Kongreß: Vorträge I. Teil (Hannover: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft, 1994), pp. 1-8.
• “Theodicy and Divine Intervention,” in Thomas F. Tracy, ed., The God Who Acts: Philosophical and Theological Explorations (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 31-40.
• “Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm,” in Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa, eds., A Companion to Metaphysics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 268-71.
• “Religious Disagreements and Doxastic Practices,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 54 (1994): 885-90.
• “Leibniz’s Examination of the Christian Religion,” Faith and Philosophy, 11 (1994): 517-46.
• “Moral Faith,” The Journal of Philosophy, 92 (1995): 75-95.
• “Introductory Note to *1970” [i.e. to Gödel’s “Ontological Proof”] in Kurt Gödel, Collected Works, Vol. 3, Solomon Feferman et al., eds., (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 388-402.
• “Moral Horror and the Sacred,” Journal of Religious Ethics, 23 (1995): 201-224.
• “Agape,” “possible worlds,” “theodicy,” and “transcendence” in Robert Audi, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 12, 633-34, 794-95, 807-8.
• “The Concept of a Divine Command,” in D.Z. Phillips, ed., Religion and Morality (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), pp. 59-80.
• “Philosophy of Religion,” in Donald M. Borchert, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Supplement (New York: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 427-31.
• “Qualia,” Faith and Philosophy, 12 (1995 [in fact, 1996]): 472-74.
• “Analytical Philosophy and Theism: Reflections on Analytical Philosophical Theology,” in William J. Wainwright, ed., God, Philosophy, and Academic Culture: A Discussion between Scholars in the AAR and the APA (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), pp. 79-87.
• “Response to Carriero, Mugnai, and Garber,” Leibniz Society Review, 6 (1996): 107-25 (part of Symposium on Robert Merrihew Adams’s Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist).
• “The Pre-established Harmony and the Philosophy of Mind,” in Roger S. Woolhouse, ed., Leibniz’s “New System<” (1695) (Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, LXVIII; Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 1996), pp. 1-13.
• “Schleiermacher on Evil,” Faith and Philosophy, 13 (1996): 563-83.
• “Atoning Transactions,” in Stephen T. Davis, ed., Philosophy and Theological Discourse (London: Macmillan, 1997), pp. 98-101.
• “Thisness and Time Travel,” Philosophia, 25 (1997): 407-15.
• “Critical Study: Sleigh’s Leibniz & Arnauld: A Commentary on Their Correspondence,” Noûs, 31 (1997): 266-77.
• “Things in Themselves,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 57 (1997): 801-25.
• “Symbolic Value,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 21 (1997): 1-15.
• “Self-Love and the Vices of Self-Preference,” Faith and Philosophy, 15 (1998): 500-513.
• “Original Sin: A Study in the Interaction of Philosophy and Theology,” in Francis J. Ambrosio, ed., The Question of Christian Philosophy Today (New York: Fordham University Press, 1999), pp. 80-104 (with questions and answers from conference discussion, pp. 104-110).
• “Stewardship or Generosity?” in Wallace M. Alston, Jr., ed., Theology in the Service of the Church: Essays in Honor of Thomas W. Gillespie (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 12-18.
• “Leibniz’s Conception of Religion,” in The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, vol. 7 (Bowling Green, Ohio: Philosophy Documentation Center, 2000), pp. 57-70.
• “Reading the Silences, Questioning the Terms: A Response to the Focus on Eighteenth-Century Ethics,” in Journal of Religious Ethics, 28 (2000): 281-284.
• “God, Possibility, and Kant,” in Faith and Philosophy, 17 (2000): 425-440.
• “Holy Places,” in The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 22 (2001): 11-15.
• “Scanlon’s Contractualism: Critical Notice of T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other,” in The Philosophical Review, 110 (2001 [in fact 2002]): 563-86.
• “Précis of Finite and Infinite Goods” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 64 (2002): 439-44 (part of a Book Symposium on Finite and Infinite Goods).
• “Responses” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 64 (2002): 475-90 (part of a Book Symposium on Finite and Infinite Goods).
• “Science, Metaphysics, and Reality,” in Hans Poser, ed., VII. Internationaler Leibniz-Kongreß: Nihil sine ratione, Nachtragsband (Hannover: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft e.V., 2002), pp. 50-64.
• “The Silence of God in the Thought of Martin Buber,” Philosophia, 30 (2003): 51-68.
• “Anti-Consequentialism and the Transcendence of the Good,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 67 (2003): 114-32.
• “Voluntarism and the Shape of a History,” Utilitas, 16 (2004): 124-32.
• “Moral Necessity,” In Donald Rutherford and J. A. Cover, eds., Leibniz: Nature and Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 181-93.
• “Human Nature, Christian Vocation, and the Sexes,” In Nicholas Coulton, ed., The Bible, the Church and Homosexuality (London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 2005), pp. 100-113.
• “Faith and Religious Knowledge.” In Jacqueline Mariña, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 35-51.
• “How Can I Give You Up, O Ephraim?” Theology Today, 63 (2006): 88-93.
• “Love and the Problem of Evil.” Philosophia, 34 (2006 — actually 2007): 243-51.
• “Idealism Vindicated.” In Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman, eds., Persons: Human and Divine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), pp. 35-54.
• “The Priority of the Perfect in the Philosophical Theology of the Continental Rationalists.” In Michael Ayers, ed., Rationalism, Platonism and God: A Symposium on Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) (Proceedings of the British Academy, 149), pp. 91-116.
• “A Philosophical Autobiography.” In Samuel Newlands and Larry M. Jorgensen, eds., Metaphysics and the Good: Themes from the Philosophy of Robert Merrihew Adams (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 16-32.
• “The Theological Ethics of the Young Rawls and Its Background.” In John Rawls, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, with On My Religion, ed. by Thomas Nagel with commentary by Thomas Nagel, Joshua Cohen, and Robert Merrihew Adams (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 24-101.
• “Conflict.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 83 (2009), pp. 115-32.
• “The Reception of Leibniz’s Philosophy in the Twentieth Century.” In G. A. J. Rogers, Tom Sorell, and Jill Kraye, eds., Insiders and Outsiders in Seventeenth Century Philosophy. (New York: Routledge, 2010 —bound copy received 12 Sept. 2009), pp. 309-14.
• “Comment.” In Susan Wolf’s Tanner Lectures, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 75-84.
• “A Theory of Virtue: Introductory Remarks.” Philosophical Studies, 148 (2010): 133-34.
• “A Theory of Virtue: Response to Critics.” Philosophical Studies, 148 (2010): 159-65.
• “Philosophical Themes in Schleiermacher’s Christology. Philosophia 39 (2011), 3 :449-460.
• “Consciousness, Physicalism, and Panpsychism". Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (2013), 3:728-735.
• “Justice, happiness, and perfection in Leibniz's city of God". In Larry M. Jorgensen & Samuel Newlands, New Essays on Leibniz’s Theodicy. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
• “No-Fault Responsibility for Outcomes". The Harvard Review of Philosophy 21 (2014):4-17.
• “Comments on Intelligent Virtue: Moral Education, Aspiration, and Altruism". Journal of Value Inquiry 49 (2015), 1-2):289-295.
• “Daniel Garber, Leibniz, and Early Modern Philosophy". The Leibniz Review 29 (2019):3-11.
• “Nestorius and Nestorianism". The Monist 104 (2021), 3:366-375.
• "Monotheism, Worship, and the Good". In Aaron Segal and Samuel Lebens, eds., The Philosophy of Worship: Divine and Human Aspects. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025).

Compiled and maintained by Andrew M. Bailey and Jashiel Resto Quiñones.

Books

• The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology (Oxford University Press, 1987).
• Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist (Oxford University Press, 1994).
• Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1999).
• A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good (Oxford University Press, 2006).
• What Is, and What Is In Itself: A Systematic Ontology (Oxford University Press, 2021).

(Last updated: 8 March 2026)