Table Of ContentCONTEMPORARY PRACTICE AND METHOD
IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
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CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE AND METHOD
IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
New Essays
Edited by David Cheetham and Rolfe King
continuum
Continuum International Publishing Group
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80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038
© David Cheetham and Rolfe King and Contributors 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
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or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from
the publishers.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 0-8264-9588-5
978-0-8264-9588-4
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A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Aarontype Limited, Easton, Bristol
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Kings Lynn, Norfolk
Contents
Contributors vii
Editors' Introduction 1
Imagining the Future: How Scepticism can Renew Philosophy 15
of Religion
JOHN L. SCHELLENBERG
Maclntyre, Tradition-Dependent Rationality and the End of 32
Philosophy of Religion
NANCEY MURPHY
A Contemporary Jewish Perspective on Philosophy of Religion 45
JOSHUA GOLDING
The Revival of Philosophy among Muslims 59
SHABBIR AKHTAR
The Study of the Self 74
JONARDON GANERI
Buddhist Approaches - Not 'What?' But 'How'? 87
DAVID WEBSTER
Comparative Philosophy of Religion 101
DAVID CHEETHAM
'Thinking Differently' in the Context of Sikh Religion 117
NlKKY-GuNINDER K.AUR SlNGH
Philosophy of Religion Takes Practice: Liturgy as Source and 133
Method in Philosophy of Religion
JAMES K.A. SMITH
Knowledge of God, Knowledge of Place and the Practice and 148
Method of Philosophy of Religion
MARK WYNN
vi Contents
Reformed Epistemology and the Recontextualizing of Natural 160
Theology
MICHAEL SUDDUTH
The Role of Trust and the Practice and Method of Philosophy 174
of Religion
ROLFE KING
The Reasonableness of Philosophy of Religion 188
PHILIP GOODCHILD
Bibliography 204
Index 217
Contributors
SHABBIR AKHTAR is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and
Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. He has written a number of
books including The Light in the Enlightenment: Christianity and the Secular Heri-
tage (Grey Seal, 1990); A Faith for All Seasons (Bellew, 1990) and The Final
Imperative: An Islamic Theology of Liberation (Bellew, 1991). His research inter-
ests include the philosophy of religion, Islam, and Christian-Muslim rela-
tions. He is also a published poet.
DAVID CHEETHAM is Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religion at the
University of Birmingham. He specializes in the philosophy and theology of
religions. He is the author of John Hick (Ashgate, 2003) and numerous arti-
cles in journals including The Heythrop Journal, Sophia, New Blackfriars and
Theology. His new book entitled Ways of Meeting and the Theology of Religions
is forthcoming (Ashgate).
JONARDON GANERI has taught at the Universities of Stirling, Nottingham and
Liverpool. He has been the Spalding Fellow in Comparative Religions at
Clare College, Cambridge, and a Visiting Professor at the Divinity School,
University of Chicago. His work is primarily on philosophical analysis
within the classical Indian traditions. His best known book is Philosophy in
Classical India: The Proper Work of Reason (Routledge, 2001).
JOSHUA GOLDING is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bellarmine Univer-
sity in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the author of Rationality and Religious
Theism (Ashgate, 2003). He has published in Religious Studies, Faith and
Philosophy, The Modern Schoolman, and Tradition. He has also contributed arti-
cles to Encyclopedia of Philosophy, International Encyclopediafor the Social Sciences,
and the Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion. He specializes in philoso-
phy of religion and Jewish philosophy.
PHILIP GOODCHILD is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious
Studies at the University of Nottingham. He has written Gilles Deleuze and
viii Contributors
the Question of Philosophy (Associated University Presses, 1996) and Deleuze
andGuattari: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire (Sage, 1996). More recently,
his Capitalism and Religion: The Price of Piety (Routledge, 2002) was an
attempt to construct a Continental philosophy of religion through the
encounter between questions of truth, ethics, and piety. His current research
interests are in the implications for philosophical and religious thought of
the collision between ecology and economy in the contemporary world.
ROLFE KING was formerly Senior Lecturer in Theology and Philosophy of
Religion at Newman College, Birmingham. He is currently an Honorary
Lecturer at the University of Birmingham and a Research Associate of the
Queen's Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, Birmingham.
His research interests focus on the relationship between forms of trust and
evidence in the context of philosophy of religion.
NANCEY MURPHY is Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological
Seminary, Pasadena, California. Her first book^ Theology in the Age of Scientific
Reasoning (Cornell University Press, 1990) won the American Academy of
Religion award for excellence. She is the author of eight other books, includ-
ing On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics (For-
tress, 1996; co-authored with George Ellis), and Did My Neurons Make Me
Do It? Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and
Free Will (Oxford University Press, 2007; co-authored with Warren
Brown). Her research interests focus on the role of modern and postmodern
philosophy in shaping Christian theology, on relations between theology
and science, and relations between neuroscience and philosophy of mind.
JOHN L. SCHELLENBERG is Professor of Philosophy at Mount Saint Vincent
University in Nova Scotia, Canada. His Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason
(Cornell University Press, 1993) stimulated what is now a lively, growing
debate and has made him a much-cited representative of atheism. Schellen-
berg has recently been investigating more fundamental questions pertaining
to the philosophy of religion. The result is a series of books: Prolegomena to a
Philosophy of Religion (Cornell University Press, 2005), The Wisdom to Doubt:
A Justification of Religious Skepticism (Cornell University Press, 2007), and The
Will to Imagine: A Justification of Skeptical Religion (forthcoming).
NiKKY-GuNiNDER K.AUR SINGH is the Crawford Family Professor of Religion
at Colby College in Maine, USA. Her interests focus on poetics and feminist
issues. She has published extensively in the field of Sikhism, including The
Feminine Principle in the Sikh Vision of the Transcendent (Cambridge University
Contributors ix
Press, 1993), The Name of My Beloved: Verses of the Sikh Gurus (Harper, 1995),
Metaphysics and Physics of the Guru Granth Sahib (Sterling, 1995). She has
lectured widely in North America, England, France, India, and Singa-
pore, and her views have been aired on television and radio in America,
Canada, and India.
JAMES K.A. SMITH is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College in
Grand Rapids, Michigan. Working at the intersection of philosophical
theology and Continental philosophy, he is the author of several books,
including The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational
Hermeneutic (InterVarsity Press, 2000), Speech and Theology: Language and the
Logic of Incarnation (Routledge, 2002), Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping
a Post-Secular Theology (Baker Academic/Paternoster, 2004), Jacques Derrida:
Live Theory (Continuum, 2005), and Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking
Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (Baker Academic, 2006). He is co-
editor of The Hermeneutic~s of Charity: Interpretation, Selfhood, and Postmodern
Faith (Brazos, 2004), Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition (Baker
Academic, 2005), and Hermeneutics at the Crossroads (Indiana University
Press, 2006).
MICHAEL SUDDUTH is a philosophy lecturer at San Francisco State University
and California State University, East Bay. He was formerly Associate
Professor of Philosophy at Saint Michael's College in Colchester, Vermont.
He has published numerous articles in philosophy of religion, including
articles in Faith and Philosophy, the International Journal for Philosophy of Reli-
gion, and Religious Studies. His first book The Reformed Objection to Natural
Theology is forthcoming. His work has focused on the concept of God, reli-
gious epistemology, and natural theology.
DAVID WEBSTER is Senior Lecturer in Religion, Philosophy and Ethics the
University of Gloucestershire. His first book was The Philosophy of Desire in
the Buddhist Pali Canon (Routledge, 2005). His current main research inter-
ests are in early Buddhism, and relating this to Western philosophy and
everyday life.
MARK WYNN is Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion in the Depart-
ment of Theology at the University of Exeter. His previous publications
include God and Goodness: A Natural Theological Perspective (Routledge, 1999)
and Emotional Experience and Religious Understanding: Integrating Perception, Con-
ception and Feeling (Cambridge University Press, 2005). His current focus of
research is the philosophy and theology of place.
