What Is Reality? : An Introduction to Metaphysics

What is real? How do we determine what the fundamental structures of reality are?

In this Questions in Christian Philosophy volume, philosopher Ross Inman offers an introduction to metaphysics. He introduces us to the tradition of metaphysics in Western philosophy, what it means to do metaphysics as a Christian, and considers timeless and universal inquiries into the central topics of metaphysics: identity, necessity and possibility, properties, universals, substances,and parts and wholes.

With this academic but accessible primer, readers will be introduced to the key topics explored in contemporary metaphysics.

The Questions in Christian Philosophy Series features introductory textbooks that offer students a Christian perspective on the various branches of philosophy, enabling them as they seek to understand all facets of life including existence, knowledge, ethics, art, and more.

Ross D. Inman (PhD Trinity College Dublin) is associate professor of philosophy at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also teaches Great Books courses at the College at Southeastern and is the editor of the journal Philosophia Christi. He is a former research fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Philosophy of Religion and at Saint Louis University. He is the author of Christian Philosophy as a Way of Life: An Invitation to Wonder and Substance and the Fundamentality of the Familiar: A Neo-Aristotelian Mereology. He and his wife, Suzanne, have three children and live in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

James K. Dew Jr. (PhD, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; PhD, University of Birmingham) is president and professor of Christian philosophy at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the coauthor of Philosophy: A Christian Introduction and Understanding Postmodernism: A Christian Perspective and the coeditor of God and Evil: The Case for God in a World Filled with Pain and God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views.