This volume brings together 14 of the papers by the late Philip Quinn, one of the world's leading philosophers of religion. It covers topics such as: religious epistemology, religious ethics, religion and tragic dilemmas, religion and political liberalism, Christian philosophy, and religious diversity.

Renonwed philosopher Kenny focuses on one of the central questions in the philosophy of religion--is the belief in God and faith in the Divine Word rational? Kenny also addresses related questions such as the existence and nature of God and the problem of evil in a world created by an omnipotent being. "A . . . profound . . . book from which anyone interested in the philosophy of religion . . . will find a great deal to learn".--The Thomist.

Two countervailing trends mark the intellectual tenor of our age – the spread of naturalistic worldviews and religious orthodoxies. Advances in biogenetics, brain research, and robotics are clearing the way for the penetration of an objective scientific self-understanding of persons into everyday life. For philosophy, this trend is associated with the challenge of scientific naturalism. At the same time, we are witnessing an unexpected revitalization of religious traditions and the politicization of religious communities across the world. From a philosophical perspective, this revival of religious energies poses the challenge of a fundamentalist critique of the principles underlying the modern Wests postmetaphysical understanding of itself. The tension between naturalism and religion is the central theme of this major new book by Jürgen Habermas. On the one hand he argues for an appropriate naturalistic understanding of cultural evolution that does justice to the normative character of the human mind. On the other hand, he calls for an appropriate interpretation of the secularizing effects of a process of social and cultural rationalization increasingly denounced by the champions of religious orthodoxies as a historical development peculiar to the West. These reflections on the enduring importance of religion and the limits of secularism under conditions of postmetaphysical reason set the scene for an extended treatment the political significance of religious tolerance and for a fresh contribution to current debates on cosmopolitanism and a constitution for international society.

These essays lay the groundwork for a practice of philosophical inquiry adequate to polytheistic or "Pagan" religious traditions, including in particular the non-reductive hermeneutics of myth and the theory of the polycentric divine manifold. Includes the previously published articles "The Theological Interpretation of Myth", "Offering to the Gods: A Neoplatonic Perspective", "Polycentric Polytheism and the Philosophy of Religion", as well as the previously unpublished "Neoplatonism and Polytheism" and "A Theological Exegesis of the Iliad, Book One".

This book is unified by three broad concerns: the rationality of belief in God, the relation between religion and morality, and the explication of the concept of God. The essays are, however, marked by diversity. Some focus on historical figures, such as Aquinas and Locke; others bring recent epistemological and metaphysical developments to bear on problems of religious belief. Some of the papers explore neglected issues central to religious practice, such as the question of how total devotion to God can permit other deep commitments; others apply philosophical distinctions from within a religious tradition, for example, in setting out a Christian approach to the problem of evil.

When this book was originally published in 1957 there had been lively debates on the air and in the press about the bearing of modern philosophy upon Christianity, but there had been relatively little sustained discussion of the subject. This book of essays was the product of a small group of Oxford philosophers and theologians, who had met and talked informally for some years before writing it. It is an attempt to discuss with care and candour some of the problems raised for Christian belief by contemporary analytical philosophy. In asking the questions raised, this book makes articulate the perplexities of many intelligent people, both believers and unbelievers. The contributors concentrate on the way such concepts as God, Revelation, the Soul, Grace are actually used rather than asserting or denying some very general theory of meaning.