Richard Swinburne

Richard Swinburne is one of the most distinguished philosophers of religion of our day. In this volume, many notable British and American philosophers unite to honor him and to discuss various topics to which he has contributed significantly. These include general topics in the philosophy of religion such as revelation, and faith and reason, and the specifically Christian doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and atonement. In the spirit of the movement which Swinburne spearheaded, the essays use analytic philosophical methods to examine doctrines in particular religious traditions, expanding upon traditional discussions of theism. As such, this volume represents a field-report on the interaction of philosophy and Christian thought in the English-speaking world. Swinburne has himself contributed an individual and personal Intellectual Autobiography.

At least since Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859, it has increasingly become accepted that the existence of God is, intellectually, a lost cause, and that religious faith is an entirely non-rational matter--the province of those who willingly refuse to accept the dramatic advances of modern cosmology. Are belief in God and belief in science really mutually exclusive? Or, as noted philosopher of science and religion Richard Swinburne puts forth, can the very same criteria which scientists use to reach theories about everything from DNA to the Big Bang be used to argue for the existence of God? In Is There a God? Swinburne presents a powerful and approachable case for the existence of God. Using the methods of scientific reasoning, Swinburne rigorously argues that science, far from replacing God, provides good grounds for belief in God. With each new discovery and advance, from black holes to quarks, superstrings to continuing evolution, science brings us closer to a complete understanding of how things work--but science can only go so far. Though it can explain much of how the universe works, science doesn't tell us why there is a universe at all. We can understand much of how life evolved, but why is there any life on earth? We can name and explicate scientific laws, but how is it that they operate in the universe? The Darwinian theory holds that the complex animal and human bodies that are here today exist because, ages ago, there were certain chemicals on earth, and given the laws of evolution, it was probable that complex organisms would emerge. But why those laws rather than any other? Why those chemicals? In Swinburne's view, the ultimate grand unifying theory is possible only by a belief in what he calls theism, acknowledging the existence of God: it was God who brought about the natural laws so that humans and animals would evolve. The watch may have been made, Swinburne asserts in reference to Richard Dawkins, with the aid of some blind screwdrivers (or even a blind watchmaking machine), but they were guided by a watchmaker with some very clear sight. At the heart of his argument is Swinburne's belief that the very success of science in showing us how deeply ordered the natural world is provides strong grounds for believing there is an even deeper cause of that order. By embracing a belief in God that acknowledges the truth in science, Swinburne's elegant argument supplies an essential spiritual element to our understanding of order and beauty, the structure beneath the chaos of the natural world. This informed and provocative volume will be essential reading for all readers of popular science, philosophy, and religion.

According to how we treat others, we acquire merit or guilt, deserve praise or blame, and receive reward or punishment, looking in the end for atonement. At times we need people to forgive and show us mercy. In this study distinguished theological philosopher Richard Swinburne examines how these moral concepts apply to humans in their dealings with each other, and applies these findings determining which versions of traditional Christian doctrines--sin and original sin, redemption, sanctification, and heaven and hell--are considered morally acceptable.

This is a revised and updated version of Swinburne's controversial treatment of the eternal philosophical problem of the relation between mind and body. He argues that we can only make sense of the interaction between the mental and the physical in terms of the soul, and that there is no scientific explanation of the evolution of the soul.

The practice of a religion such as Christianity is normally said to involve faith. But different theologians give different account of faith--some say it is simply a belief that God exists, other say it is trust in God. In this third and final volume of his trilogy on philosophical theology, Swinburne analyzes the purposes for practicing a religion--the attainment of salvation for oneself and the rendering of due worship and obedience to God--and concludes that both trust and belief are necessary for religious faith, but that the belief involved is a fairly weak kind--the belief that a certain creed is more likely than others to be true.

Why does a loving God allow humans to suffer so much? This is one of the most difficult problems of religious belief. Richard Swinburne gives a careful, clear examination of this problem, and offers an answer: it is because God wants more for us than just pleasure or freedom from suffering. Swinburne argues that God wants humans to learn and to love, to make the choices which make great differences for good and evil to each other, to form our characters in the way we choose; above all to be of great use to each other. If we are to have all this, there will inevitably be suffering for the short period of our lives on Earth. But because of the good that God gives to humans in this life, and because he makes it possible for us, through our choice, to share the life of Heaven, he does not wrong us if he allows suffering. Providence and the Problem of Evil is the final volume of Richard Swinburne's acclaimed tetralogy on Christian doctrine. It may be read on its own as a self-standing treatment of this eternal philosophical issue. Readers who are interested in a unified study of the philosophical foundations of Christian belief will find it now in the tetralogy and in his trilogy on the philosophy of theism.

Throughout the history of philosophical theology, scholars have reflected on the relationship between God and time. In the Western religious tradition, God has been thought to be eternal, in the sense that God is outside time. But many thinkers today hold that while God is everlasting, in that there was no beginning to God's existence nor will he ever cease existing, God exists within Time. In God and Time, Gregory E. Ganssle and David Woodruff have brought together 12 previously unpublished essays from leading philosophers on God's relation to time. Including work from today's most prominent thinkers in this fascinating field, God and Time represents the current state of the discussion between those who believe God to be atemporal (experiencing everything in the "eternal now") and those who believe God to be temporal (experiencing events sequentially, somewhat as we do). This collection highlights such issues as how the nature of time is relevant to the question of whether God is temporal and how God's other attributes are compatible with his mode of temporal being. By focusing on the metaphysical aspects of time and temporal existence, God and Time makes a unique contribution to the current resurgence of interest in philosophical theology in the analytic tradition.

The possibility of proving the existence of God has fascinated thinkers and believers throughout the centuries. This book critically analyzes both sides of the contemporary debate between the two most important living philosophers of religion--Richard Swinburne and D.Z. Phillips--and constructs an alternative solution. Instead of taking sides on the issue of God's existence, Messer argues that behind each thinkers' work, and their attitudes toward proving the existence of God, lies fundamental trust. A positive discussion of relativism leads to a fresh analysis of the arguments for God's existence, particularly the ontological argument. In this way, Messer concludes that they are indeed worthwhile, although not for the traditional reasons.