Theism

The past twenty years have seen a revival of interest in the epistemic of religious belief. Two philosophers who have led the way are Basil Mitchell and Richard Swinburne. Both believe that religious belief can be justified using inductive `best explanation' arguments. However, their similarity ends there. Swinburne's approach is formal, utilizing the calculus of Bayes's Theorem in assessing the weight of the evidence; Mitchell's is informal due to his recognition of judgement as central to such assessment. This book is the first full-length comparison of these two styles of justifying religious belief.

The Metaphysics of Theism is the definitive study of the natural theology of Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of medieval philosophers, written by one of the world's most eminent scholars of medieval thought. Natural theology is the investigation by analysis and rational argument of fundamental questions about reality, considered in relation to God. Professor Kretzmann shows the continuing value of Aquinas's doctrines to the philosophical enterprise today; he argues that natural theology offers the only route by which philosophers can, as philosophers, approach theological propositions, and that the one presented in this book is the best available natural theology.