Richard Swinburne

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Western Philosophy 20th-century philosophy
Image:Richard Swinburne.jpg Richard Swinburne
Name:	Richard Swinburne
Birth:	26th December 1934
School/tradition:	Analytic philosophy
Main interests:	philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, theology
Influences:	Plato, Aristotle, René Descartes,St Thomas Aquinas
Influenced:	Anthony Flew

Richard G. Swinburne (born December 26, 1934) is an eminent British professor and philosopher primarily interested in the philosophy of religion and philosophy of science.

Contents 1 Christian apologetics 2 Academic career 3 Major books 4 Spiritual autobiography 5 Critical assessment 6 External link

[edit] Christian apologetics

A member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, he is noted as one of the foremost rational Christian apologists, arguing in his many articles and books that faith in Christianity is rational and coherent in a rigorous philosophical sense. While he presents many arguments to advance the belief that God exists, he argues that God is a being whose existence is not logically necessary (see modal logic), but metaphysically necessary in a way he defines in his The Christian God. Other subjects on which Swinburne writes include personal identity (in which he espouses a view based on the concept of a soul), and epistemic justification.

Though he is most well-known for his vigorous rational defense of Christian intellectual commitments, he also has a sensitive theory of the nature of passionate faith which is developed in his book Faith and Reason.

According to an interview Swinburne did with Foma magazine, he switched from the Church of England to the Greek Orthodox Church around 1996:

I don’t think I changed my beliefs in any significant way. I always believed in the Apostolic succession: that the Church has to have its authority dating back to the Apostles, and the general teaching of the Orthodox Church on the saints and the prayers for the departed and so on, these things I have always believed.

Swinburne's philosophical method reflects the influence of Thomas Aquinas and identifies Swinburne as a Natural Theologian. He admits that he draws from Thomas a systematic approach philosophical theology. Swinburne, like Thomas, moves from basic philosophical issues (for example, the question of the possibility that God may exist in Swinburne's The Coherence of Theism), to more specific Christian beliefs (for example, the claim in Swinburne's Revelation that God has communicated to human beings propositionally in Jesus Christ). Swinburne moves in his writing program from the philosophical to the theological, building his case rigorously, but as with any approach to theology that builds upon itself, any weaknesses that one finds in Swinburne's early arguments may continue to appear weak in later arguments where he assumes the correctness of earlier conclusions. Swinburne relies on his previous arguments as he moves into his defenses of particular Christian beliefs. Swinburne has attempted to reassert classical Christian beliefs with an apologetic method that he believes is compatible with contemporary science. That method relies heavily on inductive logic, seeking to show that his Christian beliefs fit best with the evidence. His long and productive career represents a method that appeals to some, but is problematic to others.

[edit] Academic career

Swinburne has held various professorships through his career in academia, including from 1972 to 1985 at the Keele University. From 1982 to 1984 he gave the Gifford lectures at Aberdeen, resulting in the book The Evolution of the Soul. From 1985 until his retirement in 2002 he was Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford (his successor in this chair is Brian Leftow).

Swinburne has been a very active author throughout his career, producing a major book every two to three years. His books are primarily very technical works of academic philosophy, but he has written at the popular level as well. Of the non-technical works, his Is There a God? (1996), summarizing for a non-specialist audience many of his arguments for the existence of God and plausibility in the belief of that existence, is probably the most popular, and is available in translation in a dozen languages. Some of this book's explanation of "Why God Allows Evil" is summarized in Wikipedia's Theodicy article.

[edit] Major books

• The Concept of Miracle, 1970
• The Coherence of Theism, 1977
• The Existence of God, 1979 (new edition 2004).
• Faith and Reason, 1981
• The Evolution of the Soul, 1986, ISBN 0-19-823698-0
• Miracles, 1989.
• Responsibility and Atonement, 1989
• Revelation, 1991
• The Christian God, 1994
• Is There a God?, 1996, ISBN 0-19-823545-3
• Simplicity as Evidence of Truth, The Aquinas Lecture, 1997
• Providence and the Problem of Evil, 1998
• Epistemic Justification, 2001
• The Resurrection of God Incarnate, 2003

[edit] Spiritual autobiography

• Richard Swinburne, "The Vocation of a Natural Theologian," in Philosophers Who Believe, Kelly James Clark, ed. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993), pp. 179-202.

[edit] Critical assessment

• Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind (Exeter: Paternoster/Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1984), pp. 180-184.
• Keith M. Parsons, God and the Burden of Proof: Plantinga, Swinburne, and the Analytic Defense of Theism (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1989).
• Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical reflections on the claim that God speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

• D. Mark Parks, An Analysis and Critique of Richard Swinburne's Philosophical Defense of Propositional Revelation. Ph.D. Dissertation. (Fort Worth: Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1995.)

[edit] External link

• Personal Homepage at Oxford University - Includes a curriculum vitae and more complete list of publications
• Presentation at Gifford lectures