The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion

1 The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion William J. Wainwright (Editor), Distinguished Professor of Philosophy , University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee The Philosophy of Religion as a distinct discipline is an innovation of the last 200 years, but its central topics the existence and nature of the divine, humankind s relation to it, the nature of Religion , and the place of Religion in human life have been with us since the inception of Philosophy . Philosophers have long critically examined the truth of and rational justification for religious claims, and have explored such philosophically interesting phenomena as faith, religious experience, and the distinctive features of religious discourse. The second half of the twentieth century was an especially fruitful period, with philosophers using new developments in logic and epistemology to mount both sophisticated defenses of, and attacks on, religious claims.

2 The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion contains newly commissioned chapters by twenty-one prominent experts who cover the field in a comprehensive but accessible manner. Each chapter is expository, critical, and representative of a distinctive viewpoint. The Handbook is divided into two parts. The first, Problems, covers the most frequently discussed topics, among them arguments for God s existence, the nature of God s attributes, religious pluralism, the problem of evil, and religious epistemology. The second, Approaches, contains four essays assessing the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of practicing Philosophy of Religion analytic, Wittgensteinian, continental, and feminist. Contents Introduction 3 Part I. Problems 13 1. Divine Power, Goodness, and Knowledge 15 2. Divine Sovereignty and Aseity 35 3. Nontheistic Conceptions of the Divine 59 4.

3 The Ontological Argument 80 5. Cosmological and Design Arguments 116 6. Mysticism and religious Experience 138 7. Pascal's Wagers and James's Will to Believe 168 8. The Problem of Evil 188 9. religious Language 220 10. religious Epistemology 245 11. God, Science, and Naturalism 272 12. Miracles 304 13. Faith and Revelation 323 14. Morality and Religion 344 15. Death and the Afterlife 366 16. religious Diversity 392 Part II. Approaches 419 17. Analytic Philosophy of Religion 421 18. Wittgensteinianism 447 19. Continental Philosohy of Religion 472 20. Feminism and Analytic Philosophy of Religion 494 INTRODUCTION William J. Wainwright The expression Philosophy of Religion did not come into general use until the nineteenth century, when it was employed to refer to the articulation and criticism of humanity's religious consciousness and its cultural expressions in thought, language, feeling, and practice.

4 Historically, philosophical reflection on religious themes had two foci: first, God or Brahman or Nirvana or whatever else the object of religious thought, attitudes, feelings, and practice was believed to be, and, second, the human religious subject, that is, the thoughts, attitudes, feelings, and practices themselves. The first sort of philosophical reflection has had a long history. In the West, for example, discussions of the nature of God (whether he is unchanging, say, or knows the future, whether his existence can be rationally demonstrated, and the like) are incorporated in theological treatises such as Anselm's Proslogion and Monologion, Thomas Aquinas's Summas, Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed, and al-Ghazali's Incoherence of the Philosophers. They also form part of influential metaphysical systems like Plato's, Plotinus's, Descartes', and Leibniz's.

5 Hindu Vedanta and classical Buddhism included sophisticated discussions of the nature of the Brahman and of the Buddha, respectively. Many contemporary philosophers of Religion continue to be engaged with these topics (see, for example, chapters 1 through 5 and 8). The most salient feature of this sort of Philosophy of Religion is its attempts to establish truths about God or the Absolute on the basis of unaided reason. Aquinas is instructive. Some truths about God can be known only with the help of revelation. Examples are his triune nature and incarnation. Other truths about him, such as his existence, simplicity, wisdom, and power, are included in his end revelation to us but can also be known through reason. And Aquinas proceeds to show how reason can establish them. What we would today call Philosophy of Religion (or natural theology) is thus an integral part of his systematic theology.

6 Early modern philosophers like Descartes, Leibniz, and Locke are only incidentally concerned with purely theological issues, but they too insist that some important truths about God can be established by purely philosophical reflection. The notion that we should accept only those religious beliefs that can be established by reason was not commonly expressed until the later part of the seventeenth century, however, and not widely embraced until adopted by the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The consequences of the new commitment to reason alone depended on whether important religious truths could be established by natural reason. Deists believed that they could. Human reason can prove the existence of God and immortality and discover basic moral principles. Because these religious beliefs are the only ones that can be established by unaided human reason, they alone are required of everyone.

7 They are also the only beliefs needed for religious worship and practice. Beliefs wholly or partly based on some alleged revelation, on the other hand, are needless at best and pernicious at worst. Others, such as Hume, adopted a more skeptical attitude toward reason's possibilities. In their view, reason is unable to show that God exists or that any other important religious claim is significantly more probable than not. The only proper attitude for a reasonable person to take, therefore, is disbelief (atheism) or unbelief (agnosticism). The result of this insistence on reason alone was thus that Religion either became desiccated, reduced to a few simple beliefs distilled from the rich traditional systems that had given life to them, or ceased to be a live option. Reaction was inevitable, and took two forms. One was a shift from theoretical to practical (moral) reason.

8 Kant, for example, was convinced that theoretical or speculative reason could neither prove nor disprove God's existence or the immortality of the soul. Practical reason, on the other hand, provided a firm basis for a Religion lying within the boundaries of reason alone. The existence of God and an afterlife can't be established by theoretical reason. A belief in them, however, is a necessary presupposition of morality. Others, such as Friedrich Schleiermacher, shifted their attention from intellectual belief and moral conduct to religious feelings and experience. In their view, the latter, and not the former, are the root of humanity's religious life. Both approaches were widely influential in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The first fell into neglect with the waning of philosophical idealism in the first half of the twentieth century, although interest in it has recently resurfaced (see chapter 14).

9 The second has continued to be attractive to many important philosophers of Religion (see chapters 6 and 10). Philosophy of Religion was comparatively neglected by academic philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century. There were several reasons for this. One was the widespread conviction that the traditional proofs were bankrupt. Be end lievers and nonbelievers alike were persuaded that Hume and Kant had clearly exposed their fatal weaknesses. Another was the demise of nineteenth-century idealism. The twentieth-century heirs of the German and Anglo-American idealists (Hastings Rashdall, W. R. Sorley, A. C. Ewing, and A. E. Taylor, among others) had many interesting things to say about God, immortality, and humanity's religious life. But their views increasingly fell on deaf ears as analytic Philosophy replaced idealism as the dominant approach among English-speaking academics.

10 (The process Philosophy of A. N. Whitehead and his followers emerged as an alternative to idealism and analytic Philosophy that could accommodate religious interests. It was never more than a minority viewpoint, however, and finds itself today in much the same position that philosophical idealism was in in the early part of the twentieth century; its demise too seems immanent.) This is not to say that nothing of interest to philosophers of Religion was transpiring during this period. Five developments were especially important. The first was the impact of theologians like Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Paul Tillich on philosophers interested in Religion . The second was the influence of religious existentialism, including both the rediscovery of S ren Kierkegaard and the work of contemporaries like Gabriel Marcel and Martin Buber. A third was the renewal of Thomism by Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, and others.