Different religious sociologists and religious philosophers formulate various approaches to religion and the church. In this paper, several authors’ works on religious topics will be analyzed. To begin with, we will consider the second edition of Reason and faith for philosophy of religion based on the ideas of the nature of faith by Richard Swinburne. The central concept of this work is an extended discussion of the idea of religion and a more profound exposition of the Christian and Buddhist ways of salvation. Swinburne concludes that extra-worldly realities are possible and that there is a reasonable degree of epistemic justification for their appropriate consent on the part of the religious person (2005). From an epistemological perspective, the propositional Christian faith is seen by the author as a mental state in which one piece of information is contrasted with another.
Following, Can it be rational to have faith by Lara Burchak will be analyzed. The central concept of the paper is to argue that faith can be rational in some specific cases. The epistemology of Burchack’s work may well be interpreted as an argument as to whether or not epistemology extends to religious belief or whether we should adopt a less rigorous epistemology. Evidentialism is the inherently plausible proposition that faith is only justified if it is commensurate with the evidence (Pritchard, 2017). The author concludes that “belief will be rational to the extent that potential counter-evidence is not very persuasive of the position in question, or to the extent that decisions usually have the costs of deferral” (Burchak, 2012, 225). Having analyzed this work, one can note an interesting approach to rationalizing belief based on the available evidence for its truth.
Another interesting work is an article by Daniel Howard-Snyder called Propositional faith what it is and what it is not. The main idea of this work is to look at religion in general and faith in particular from the perspective of a propositional attitude. In terms of epistemology, Snyder’s work reduces it to structuring the hypothesis of a propositional relation to faith and proving this hypothesis. Regarding the conclusions, Snyder arrives at the more or less unambiguous definition of the criteria for a propositional relation to religion (2013). Analyzing this work, one can conclude that propositional theses of this work correlate in many ways with other approaches to interpreting religious views and are pretty comprehensive.
The last paper to consider is Louis Pojman’s work on Faith, hope, and doubt. The main idea of this article is to identify the differences between the concepts of faith and hope in the context of religion. Pojman argues that religious faith can be based on hope rather than a firm belief in the existence of the object of faith (2015). The epistemology in this work is not based on avid socialism but a specific definition of concepts and their application to religion. This work implies that one does not have to have an unquestionable belief in God to believe. In the meantime, one can live a devotional and worshipful moral life based on the hope that God exists. Analyzing this work, one can conclude that even if the hopeful believer considers the existence of God to be unlikely, the very fact that he hopes for the truth of that existence gives him faith.
References
Burchak, L. (2012). Can it be rational to have faith? In Chandler, J., & Harrison, V. (Eds.). Probability in the philosophy of religion. Oxford University Press.
Howard-Snyder, D. (2013). Propositional faith: what it is and what it is not. American Philosophical Quarterly, 50(4), 1-46.
Pojman, L. P, & Rea, M. (2015). Philosophy of religion: An anthology. Cengage Learning.
Pritchard, D. (2017). Faith and reason: Religious epistemology. Philosophy, 81(1), 101-118.
Swinburne, R. (2005). Faith and reason. Clarendon Press.