Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment: New Essays in the Philosophy of Religion

The field of philosophy of religion is probably more vital today than at any other time in this century. This volume is intended to reflect that vitality, and it contains original papers by many of the leading writers in the field. For the most part the papers are systematic studies that exhibit both the philosophical depth and the wider implications of the issues they address. As a group, the essays bear significantly on most of the major problems in the philosophy of religion, but they approach these problems in quite different ways. Some take up a leading issue, such as the problem of evil, independently of any particular works in which it has received philosophical treatment; others critically examine historically influential texts. Some of the papers assess the implications, for the philosophy of religion, of a major philosophical position, such as coherentism in epistemology or naturalism as a metaphysical view of the world. Others explore the meaning of important religious doc¬ trines, for instance that of total devotion to God.