In this wide-ranging study, Quinn argues that human moral autonomy is compatible with unqualified obedience to divine commands. He formulates several versions of the crucial assumptions of divine command ethics, defending them against a battery of objections often expressed in the philosophical literature.

This unique volume collects some of the best recent work on the philosophical challenge that religious diversity poses for religious belief. Featuring contributors from philosophy, religious studies, and theology, it is unified by the way in which many of the authors engage in sustained critical examination of one another's positions. John Hick's pluralism provides one focal point of the collection. Hick argues that all the major religious traditions make contact with the same ultimate reality, each encountering it through a variety (...) of culturally shaped forms of thought and experience but all offering equally effective paths to salvation or liberation. Another central position is William P. Alston's defense of the Christian practice of forming beliefs about manifestations of God in response to experiences of divine presence or activity. Articles by Hick and Alston develop their arguments and other selections respond, criticizing or defending various aspects of one or both positions. Religious skepticism, religious exclusivism, religious inclusivism, and other perspectives are also represented. In the introduction, the editors suggest connections among the articles and report on additional exchanges between the contributors. The only anthology that provides comprehensive coverage of the current philosophical debate about religious diversity, The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity is ideal for courses and seminars on the philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and world religions. (shrink)

This paper is a critical and exploratory discussion of Plantinga’s claim that certain propositions which self-evidently entail the existence of God could be properly basic. In the critical section, I argue that Plantinga fails to show that the modem foundationalist’s criterion for proper basicality, according to which such propositions could not be properly basic, is self-referentially incoherent or otherwise defective. In the exploratory section, I try to build a case for the view that, even if such propositions could be properly (...) basic, they would seldom, if ever, be properly basic for intellectually sophisticated adult theists in our culture. (shrink)

THIS PAPER IS A STUDY OF KANT’S ATTEMPT TO RECONSTRUCT THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT WITHIN THE LIMITS OF REASON. IT BEGINS WITH A BRIEF SKETCH OF ANSELM’S SATISFACTION-THEORETIC ACCOUNT OF ATONEMENT AND THEN PRESENTS THE MAIN OBJECTIONS TO THAT ACCOUNT. NEXT KANT’S ACCOUNT OF ATONEMENT IS GIVEN A DETAILED EXPOSITION, AND IT IS SHOWN THAT IT AVOIDS THE DIFFICULTIES THAT PLAGUE ANSELM’S ACCOUNT. KANT’S ACCOUNT IS THEN SUBJECTED TO CRITICISM.

One of the most influential analytic philosophers of the late twentieth century, William P. Alston is a leading light in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of language. In this volume, twelve leading philosophers critically discuss the central topics of his work in these areas, including perception, epistemic circularity, justification, the problem of religious diversity, and truth.

Dieser Aufsatz ist eine kritische und erkundende Diskussion von Plantingas Behauptung, daß bestimmte Aussagen, aus denen evidentermaßen folgt, daß Gott existiert, berechtigterweise basal sein könnten. Im kritischen Abschnitt argumentiere ich dafür, daß es Plantinga nicht gelingt zu zeigen, daß das Kriterium des modernen Fundamentalisten für berechtigte Basalität, dem zufolge solche Aussagen nicht berechtigterweise basal sein können, selbstreferentiell inkohärent oder anderweitig mangelhaft ist. Im erkundenden Abschnitt versuche ich, ein Argument für die Auffassung zu entwickeln, daß solche Aussagen, selbst wenn sie berechtigterweise (...) basal sein könnten, wenn überhaupt, nur selten berechtigterweise basal für intellektuell differenzierte erwachsene Theisten unserer Kultur wären. (shrink)

In 85 new and updated essays, this comprehensive volume provides an authoritative guide to the philosophy of religion. Includes contributions from established philosophers and rising stars 22 new entries have now been added, and all material from the previous edition has been updated and reorganized Broad coverage spans the areas of world religions, theism, atheism,, the problem of evil, science and religion, and ethics.

This chapter surveys recent work on philosophical issues raised by religious diversity or pluralism. It focuses on four topics. The first is the epistemological challenge of religious diversity. The rationality of commitment to any particular religious tradition seems to be threatened by the existence of rival traditions. The second is the political problem of religious toleration. Religious conflict throughout the world suggests a need for better arguments against religious intolerance than those currently available. The third is the task of understanding (...) the concept of religion. Religious pluralism fuels debate about whether the concept of religion can be defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions or, if it cannot, whether it must be analyzed in terms of family resemblances. And the fourth is the enterprise of making constructive comparisons in religious ethics. Similarities and differences between the virtue theories of diverse religious traditions illuminate strengths and weaknesses in the ethical thought of the religions subjected to comparison. The chapter argues from these examples to the conclusion that religious diversity gives rise to several exciting and important problems that ought to be high on the agenda of philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In the acknowledgments at the beginning of Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics, Robert Merrihew Adams remarks that he has “taught and written about the topics of this book for approximately thirty years.” He lists there eighteen previously published journal articles or book chapters on which the book draws; it integrates material from these publications into the framework of its subtitle. The book deserves a holistic evaluation. Unfortunately, for lack of space, I cannot perform that task here. Being (...) forced to focus more narrowly, I shall discuss only the divine command account of obligation formulated and defended in the book’s third section. My aim is to raise but not to settle issues both about the way Adams formulates his account and about the defense of it he offers. (shrink)

In “Epistemology in Philosophy of Religion,” Philip Quinn focuses on the central problem of religious epistemology for monotheistic religions: the epistemic status of belief in the existence of God. He explores what epistemic conditions arguments for God's existence would have to satisfy to be successful and whether any arguments satisfy those conditions. Turning to the claims of reformed epistemology about belief in God, Quinn assesses Alvin Plantinga's claim that belief in God is for many theists properly basic, that is, has (...) positive epistemic status even when it is not based on arguments or any other kind of propositional evidence. Quinn distinguishes two versions of this claim. According to the first, emphasized in Plantinga's earlier work, theistic belief is properly basic with respect to justification or rationality, while according to the second version, prominent in Plantinga's more recent work, theistic belief is properly basic with respect to warrant. (shrink)

Paul K. Moser’s Philosophy after Objectivity covers a lot of territory; it takes stands on issues in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Yet it is also tightly unified. Part of what gives it unity is a doctrine of conditional ontological agnosticism. That doctrine is advertised in the book’s introduction and argued for in its first chapter. It also serves as some sort of constraint on the views Moser develops in subsequent chapters. He tells us that the (...) semantic foundationalism he proposes in chapter 2 “fits with the conditional ontological agnosticism of chapter 1”. He also says that the account of meaning he sets forth in chapter 3 “fits with the conditional ontological agnosticism of chapter 1”. And he claims that the views on truth and reasons he develops in chapter 4 answer certain questions “while accommodating the conditional ontological agnosticism of chapter 1”. So Moser sees COA as a central feature of the project of his book. We must understand it if we are to grasp the project’s architecture. This provides us with reason to ask: What exactly is COA? How does Moser support it, and how good are his arguments? Once adopted, what work does it do in shaping or constraining the stands Moser takes in the remainder of the book? But when we try to answer questions such as these, puzzles arise. I shall discuss three. (shrink)

In 85 new and updated essays, this comprehensive volume provides an authoritative guide to the philosophy of religion. Includes contributions from established philosophers and rising stars 22 new entries have now been added, and all material from the previous edition has been updated and reorganized Broad coverage spans the areas of world religions, theism, atheism,, the problem of evil, science and religion, and ethics.

This paper begins with an outline of some of the main themes in the ecclesiology Kant presents in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. It then discusses implications of Kant’s ecclesiology for issues concerning scriptural interpretation and religious toleration. With the help of these implications, an objection to Kant’s ecclesiology is developed, and a Kantian ecclesiology modified in response to the objection is sketched out. The Roman Catholic ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council is compared to both Kant’s ecclesiology (...) and the modified Kantian ecclesiology. It is argued that on some points the ecclesiology of Vatican II represents movement in the direction of Kant’s ecclesio]ogy while on others tension between Kant and Vatican II can be reduced by the modified Kantian ecclesiology. (shrink)

It has become fashionable to try to prove the impossibility of there being a God. Findlay's celebrated ontological disproof has in the past quarter century given rise to vigorous controversy. More recently James Rachels has offered a moral argument intended to show that there could not be a being worthy of worship. In this paper I shall examine the position Rachels is arguing for in some detail. I shall endeavor to show that his argument is unsound and, more interestingly, that (...) the genuine philosophical perplexity which motivates it can be dispelled without too much difficulty. (shrink)

The world religions make conflicting claims about the nature of ultimate reality, and they all appeal to experience for justification of their claims. The experiential justifications for conflicting religious beliefs thus seem to be mutually destructive. One response to this situation, advocated by John Hick, is to reinterpret traditional religious claims in ways that eliminate the conflicts; another, favored by William P. Alston, is to defend the rationality of continuing, despite the conflicts, to engage in the doxastic practice of one’s (...) own religion. I begin this paper with a summary of the criticism of Alston’s defense that I have spelled out in greater detail elsewhere. After arguing that Alston’s conclusions require significant modification, I go on to defend the modified Alstonian conclusions against objections recently raised by Hick. I conclude by suggesting a view that seems to me to combine the best features of Alston’s and Hick’s approaches to religious pluralism. (shrink)

Metaphysics, as I understand it, is the attempt to construct theories which give correct accounts in general terms of pervasive structural features of reality. Though not precise and not intended as an explicit definition, this characterization is comprehensive enough to include both descriptive and revisionary varieties of metaphysical theory. The enterprise of descriptive metaphysics, Strawson tells us, consists in describing “the actual structure of our thought about the world.” Presumably a philosopher would favor this approach to metaphysics if he or (...) she believed either that the actual structure of our thought about the world provides, at least for the most part, an accurate portrait of the world’s structure or that the actual structure of our thought at any time provides privileged access, or perhaps our only access, at that time to the structure of the world. Revisionary metaphysics, by contrast, is concerned to produce a structure of thought about the world better than the one we actually have. Obviously a philosopher would adopt this approach if he or she believed that the actual structure of our thought about the world provides, in at least some important respects, an inaccurate portrait of the world’s structure and stands in need of revision in the interests of correctness. And clearly a philosopher might hold that the actual structure of our thought is quite accurate in some respects and need only be described to yield correct theory and yet is thoroughly inaccurate in others and requires substantial revision if correct theory is to be the outcome. Philosophers may, as I suppose most of them do, practice by turns descriptive and revisionary kinds of metaphysics. No global commitment to one approach or the other is required; the choice between approaches can be allowed to rest on the exigencies of local problems. (shrink)