The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 1 (Fall, 1998) of the APA Newsletters

This is a superb volume. Seldom does a book help define an area of philosophy as much as this one does.

Until 30-40 years ago, there could hardly have been said to be an "area" of philosophy of religion. Since then, however, philosophers have advanced old topics, such as proofs for God’s existence, to impressive levels of sophistication and have taken entirely new directions in philosophical inquiry into religion. These discussions have deeply involved metaphysics, philosophy of language, logic, and epistemology. These are approached with all of the sophistication of analytic tools, responsible historical inquiry, and close familiarity with religions. And serious journals specializing in philosophy of religion have come into existence. The field of philosophy of religion continues its rapid growth. This companion to philosophy of religion, then, is not so much a report on an old familiar area as it is an inventory of a lively area in the making. Appropriately, the book ends with a section entitled, "New Directions in Philosophy of Religion."

There are 78 articles in the volume, most about seven pages in length, involving 75 authors. The familiar names of leading theistic defenders are here (with the conspicuous absence of William Alston), as well as well-known atheists—Kai Nielsen, Antony Flew, and Michael Martin—and a friendly atheist, William Rowe.

The editors proclaim this volume to be a "guide to philosophy of religion for nonspecialists" that will also "engage" specialists. To that end, most of the authors in this volume guide the reader through a brief survey of their topic in addition to advacing the discussion on their own.

Each article has a brief bibliography attached, and the volume has a good index. In addition, the editors provide within the body of the articles cross-references to other articles in the volume. They have thus made it quite easy to build units of study for classroom use. The editors also provide a quickie, "Resources for Further Study," at the end, to help the newcomer with information on journals, book series, and publishers that do philosophy of religion, as well as organizations involved with philosophy of religion. In what follows I shall list the divisions of the book with a brief run-down on some of the articles.

The first part contains presentations of philosophical issues that arise in the various religions of the world, including African and Eastern religions. The rest of the volume is confined almost exclusively to Western, theistic religions, and largely to Christianity.

This section includes good introductions to medieval thought in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. It contains an excellent article by Derek Perebom on philosophy of religion in the rationalists, empiricists, and Kant, and a welcome article by Merold Westphal on the emergence of modern philosophy of religion.

This part of the book introduces the reader to phenomenology and existentialism, pragmatism, process theology, Thomism, and Wittgensteinianism, and then to the Reformed, Anglican, Jewish, and Orthodox traditions. The article on Wittgensteinianism, by John Hyman, is a forthright rejection, seldom so clearly stated, of the later Wittgenstein on religion. Hyman summarizes Wittgenstein’s views in two propositions: (1) expressions of religious beliefs in words are "something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference," and (2) Therefore, religious beliefs are immune from falsification or from verification. Hyman counters that because religious belief involves "a passionate commitment to a system of reference," it does not follow that it does not also involve belief in propositions. Indeed, a believer would undoubtedly invoke the propositions to ground the religious passion. Neither is there anything in Wittgenstein’s idea of religion being a "form of life" that precludes its involving historical and metaphysical beliefs. Hyman concludes that the views of the later Wittgenstein on religion have little to recommend them.

Robert Gibbs’ survey of the Jewish tradition in twentieth century philosophy of religion mocks the editors’ declaration that this volume is a guide for nonspecialists. Gibbs gabs glibly about Levinas’ "egological reading of Husserl" (without telling us anything about Husserl’s thoughts in relation to philosophy of religion). He also refers knowingly to the "wound of the naked skin" without explanation. Also, Gibbs glitches grandly when he describes Buber’s "I-Thou" relationship as between a "speaker" and others, whereas Buber taught that "In the beginning was relationship," only followed after by speech.

Janet Soskice reiterates her interesting views on religious language and metaphor, and Michael Martin writes in support of a verificationist criterion of meaningfulness that excludes religious language from the realm of the meaningful. The concluding article, by Roger Trigg, on realism and anti-realism in theology, discusses D.Z. Phillips’ "neo-Wittgensteinian" views and also what Trigg calls "naive" and "critical" theological realism.

Michael Martin reviews arguments that philosophers have given against a verifiability criterion of meaning and indicates directions for a defense of that criterion. He works with Kai Nielsen’s formulation that: "For any statement, S, S is factually meaningful if and only if there is at least some observation statement O that could count for or against S." Martin proceeds to consider and turn back objections to this formulation, in order to preserve the meaninglessness of "God exists." Unfortunately, Martin misses more apparent objections. Here, briefly, are some: (1) People have claimed to have had experiences of God. Let O be a statement recording the occurrence of such an experience. O counts in favor of "God exists," even if one thinks that such evidence is weak or overridden by other considerations. That’s enough, I should think, to make "God exists" meaningful on the criterion he endorses. (2) Why can’t O be the observation statement: "I exist," thought by God about God? This would, surely, count in favor of "God exists." But then "God exists" is meaningful. The obvious answer would be that there is no observation statement that records "our" (human?) observation of God existing. I wonder, though, whether this is a good reason. After all, there is no statement recording my observation that you are observing something (unless we are analytic behaviorists). So how can the fact that you are observing something be meaningful to me? (3) Consider the statement: "God now creates an elephant right in front of me." My present observations count against it. Hence it is meaningful. But it entails that God exists. So the latter is meaningful as well. This example differs from ones Martin discusses and rejects.

This section has 14 articles revolving around the attributes of God. Eleonore Stump presents a sophisticated conception of God’s simplicity, matched by Brian Leftow on eternity, Mavrodes on omniscience, Paul Helm on goodness, and Richard Creel on immutability and impassability. The latter article is especially notable, because Creel courageously reverses his earlier position that God has no emotions. He now argues that while God is not overcome by emotions, God should be thought of as emotionally "touched" by the experiences and actions of creatures.

Here we find articles for each of the types of arguments for God’s existence. Outstanding is William Rowe’s piece on cosmological arguments, in which Rowe carefully sifts through different versions of the principle of sufficient reason. Clement Dore’s article on the ontological argument reminds me of an IQ test: It invites the question, "Which article doesn’t belong?" This is because Dore forgoes entirely the task of familiarizing the reader with ontological arguments, instead focusing solely on a defense of one formulation by Descartes of the ontological argument. Included as well are, among others, George Schlesinger on miracles, Keith Yandell on religious experience and Alvin Plantinga, with a somewhat revised statement of the proper basicality of some statements about God.

Here the reader will find Michael Peterson with a survey of the problem of evil, Kai Nielsen on naturalistic explanations of theistic belief, and Antony Flew defending the presumption against atheism.

This section concentrates on a relatively under-developed area of philosophy of religion. William Craig provides a good summary of his arguments for God’s existence with the help of contemporary cosmology. William Hasker follows with an essay intending to defend what he calls a "religious reading of evolution." Robert Audi writes on theism and the scientific understanding of the mind, and Frederick Ferre on theism and technology.

A broad range of ethical issues are surveyed here including: James Childress on theism and medical ethics; Gary Comstock on environmental ethics; and Paul Weithman on theism, law and politics. In addition, there are several articles on ethical theory and theism, including Janine Idziak on divine command ethics, Robert George on natural law ethics, and Jean Porter on virtue ethics.

Heroic efforts are made here to preserve the coherence of Christian doctrines, the trinity, incarnation, heaven and hell, and the like, either in their original forms or in some modern revision. As a non-Christian, I found parts of this section more than a bit confusing. It was hard for me to understand the differences between the varieties of positions and what made for orthodoxy and heresy. I would like to see a contemporary analytic philosopher undertake a clear presentation, as far as possible in contemporary idiom, of the history of Christian doctrine for non-Christians. Eleonore Stump’s article on petitionary prayer is outstanding for raising and offering answers for every serious issue with petitionary prayer that I have ever come across. The paper, however, is not devoted to Christian theism per se and would have been better placed elsewhere.

This section has an important article by Sarah Coakley on feminism and philosophy of religion, an area only recently come into its own with the writings of, mainly, Grace Jantzen and Pamela Anderson. Coakley’s discussion utilizes familiar feminist themes in application to philosophy of religion. In connection with the free-will solution to the problem of evil, Coakley calls into question an incompatibilist notion of freedom as reflective of a generic male bias by questioning the value of autonomy, as usually understood. She then proceeds to suggest a feminist interpretation of the trinity which recognizes "trans-individual identity." This would replace the usual (male) inclination to protect the barriers of personal identity for each persona of the trinity. Finally, Coakley suggests importing the advantages of "standpoint epistemology" into the discussion of religious epistemology, and raises serious questions about the very program of subjecting religious experience to rational justification. Analytic philosophers of religion have been largely apathetic to the relevance of the feminist critique to their work. Admittedly, the issues have not been clearly drawn, but Coakley’s article should convince one of the need to pursue the feminist analysis with care and rigor and to test its applications to philosophy of religion.

A second article in this section is Paul Griffith’s piece on "comparative" philosophy of religion. It ends with a call for attention to the philosophical arguments produced in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism. One thinks of Buddhist arguments against the existence of God and Hindu arguments for the trans-migration of souls. Such engagement would turn philosophy of religion toward a global approach.

This brings us to the third article in the section: John Hick on "Religious Pluralism." Hick presents his familiar position, this time, though, utilizing William Alston as an ally, and lists, with respect, some interesting opposing pluralistic hypotheses. The book ends with Hick saying that "The whole subject of the relation between the religions is so obviously a major problem within the philosophy of religion...that it seems inevitable that it will be increasingly widely discussed in the coming decades." Indeed.