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Understanding Theism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Alan Millar
Alan Millar
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Stirling
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Extract

Much contemporary philosophy of religion is preoccupied with highly general problems about the nature of religious belief and of religious language, rather than with how to interpret, in detail, specific religious beliefs or forms of religious discourse. Among the matters of dispute there seem to be two of overriding importance. The first concerns the relation between religious beliefs and experience and centres on the question, what sorts of experience are relevant to the acceptance or rejection of religious beliefs. The second concerns whether or not religious beliefs have an explanatory function. Discussion of both these themes in relation to theistic belief is still largely dominated by conceptions of God and of his relation to the world which have been developed by natural theologians, particularly, though not exclusively, those who have worked within traditions significantly influenced by Thomas Aquinas. Thus the idea that religious beliefs have an explanatory function is commonly associated with the view that they present answers to questions raised by those alleged traits or features of the world which have been the concern of natural theologians and which have been described by means of concepts of ‘contingency’, ‘purposiveness’, ‘order’, and ‘design’. Consequently, the sort of experience often held to be relevant to the acceptance or rejection of theistic belief is that which is relevant to the application of these problematic concepts.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 1981 , pp. 311 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

page 312 note 1 Phillips, D. Z., ‘Religious beliefs and language games’, Ratio, XII (1970), pp. 2646Google Scholar; Winch, P., ‘Meaning and Religious Language’ in Brown, Stuart C. (ed.), Reason and Religion (Ithaca, New York, 1977), pp. 193221.Google Scholar

page 312 note 2 On this theme see Mitchell, B., The justification of Religious Belief (London and Basingstoke, 1973), part III.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 313 note 1 Quotations of the Confessions, hereafter ‘Conf.’, are from the translation of , F. J. SheedLondon, 1945).Google Scholar

page 314 note 1 Hereafter referred to as ‘FW’. The English title is that used by Benjamin, Anna S. and Hackstaff, L. H. in their translation of de libero arbitrio (Indianapolis and New York, 1964).Google Scholar

page 314 note 2 See City of God, VIII. 6.Google Scholar Cf. Plato's, Theaetetus 169d–186e.Google Scholar Quotations of the City of God, hereafter ‘CG’, are from the translation of Bettenson, Henry, edited by Knowles, David (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972).Google Scholar

page 314 note 3 Augustine admits to some uncertainty on this point in ‘FW’, II. 15.Google Scholar

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page 317 note 4 On this theme see On the Trinity, VIII. 3.Google Scholar

page 318 note 1 For a recent argument along these lines see Swinburne, R., The Coherence of Theism (Oxford, 1977), ch. II.Google Scholar

page 320 note 1 See CG, VIII.Google Scholar