Religious epistemology

Short description: Approach to epistemological questions from a religious perspective

Religious epistemology broadly covers religious approaches to epistemological questions, or attempts to understand the epistemological issues that come from religious belief. The questions asked by epistemologists apply to religious beliefs and propositions — whether they seem rational, justified, warranted, reasonable, based on evidence and so on. Religious views also influence general epistemological theories, such as in the case of Reformed epistemology.[1][2][need quotation to verify]

Reformed epistemology has mainly developed in contemporary Christian religious epistemology from the late-20th century, as in the work of Alvin Plantinga (born 1932), William P. Alston (1921-2009), Nicholas Wolterstorff (born 1932) and Kelly James Clark,[3] as a critique of and alternative to the idea of "evidentialism" of the sort proposed by W. K. Clifford (1845-1879).[4][5] Alvin Plantinga, for instance, is critical of the evidentialist analysis of knowledge provided by Richard Feldman and by Earl Conee.[6][7]

D. Z. Phillips (1934-2006) states that the argument of the reformed epistemologists furthers and challenges a view he dubs "foundationalism":

> The essence of the Reformed challenge is to accuse the foundationalist of claiming to have a criterion of rationality which, in fact, he does not possess. By means of this alleged criterion the foundationalist claims to discern which epistemic practices are rational and which are not. Non-rational practices, he claims, include those of religion.[8]

Much work in recent epistemology of religion goes beyond debates on foundationalism and reformed epistemology to consider contemporary issues deriving from social epistemology (especially concerning the epistemology of testimony, or the epistemology of disagreement), or formal epistemology's use of probability theory.[9] Other notable work draws on the idea that knowing God is akin to knowing a person, which is not reducible to knowing propositions about a person.[10]

The emergence of the Gettier problem from 1963 has highlighted issues with traditional views on justified true belief (JTB) as a foundation for knowledge, including religious knowledge..[11]

Some work in recent epistemology of religion discusses various challenges from psychology, cognitive science or evolutionary biology to the rationality or justification of religious beliefs. Some argue that evolutionary explanations of religious belief undermine its rationality.[12][13] Others respond to these arguments.[14]

## See also

* Pramana
* Faith and rationality
* Fideism
* Pascal's wager
* Reformed epistemology
* Skeptical theism
* Street epistemology

## References

1. ↑ For example: Clark, Kelly James (October 2, 2004). "Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://www.iep.utm.edu/relig-ep/. "[...] reformed epistemologists doubt that classical foundationalists are correct in claiming that the proper starting point of reason is self-evidence, evidence to the senses, and incorrigibility.".
2. ↑ Dougherty, Trent; Tweedt, Chris (July 24, 2016). "Religious Epistemology". https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/phc3.12185.
3. ↑ Clark, Kelly James (March 1990). Return to reason: a critique of Enlightenment evidentialism and defense of reason and belief in God. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans. ISBN 978-0-8028-0456-3. https://books.google.com/books?id=GXP5RdOmNt0C&pg=PA8. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
4. ↑ Wolterstorff, Nicholas (1995). Divine discourse: philosophical reflections on the claim that God speaks. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 13–16. ISBN 978-0-521-47557-0. https://books.google.com/books?id=FVydaBw6g3sC&pg=PA14. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
5. ↑ van Woudenberg, René (2008). "Chapter 3: Reformed Epistemology". in Copan, Paul; Meister, Chad. Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Issues. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-3990-8.
6. ↑ Feldman, R.; Conee, E. (July 1, 1985). "Evidentialism". Philosophical Studies (Kluwer Academic Publishers) 48: 15–34. doi:10.1007/BF00372404. ISSN 1573-0883.
7. ↑ Plantinga, Alvin (1993). Warrant and Proper Function. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 185–93. ISBN 978-0-19-507864-0. https://archive.org/details/warrantproperfun00plan.
8. ↑ Phillips, D. Z. (1988). Faith After Foundationalism. London; New York: Routledge. p. 24. ISBN 978-0-415-00333-9.
9. ↑ Benton, Matthew A. (2018-04-22). Knowledge, Belief, and God: New Insights in Religious Epistemology. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198798705. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/knowledge-belief-and-god-9780198798705.
10. ↑ Stump, Eleonore (2010). Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199277421. ; Benton, Matthew (2018). "God and Interpersonal Knowledge". Res Philosophica 95 (3): 421–447. doi:10.11612/resphil.1666. https://www.pdcnet.org/resphilosophica/content/resphilosophica_2018_0095_0003_0421_0447. ; and Benton, Matthew (2024). Knowledge and God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781009124119. https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/knowledge-and-god/361F1D5364E65B137B88222A3BCE72A0.
11. ↑ DePoe, John M.; McNabb, Tyler Dalton (6 February 2020). "Introduction to Religious Epistemology". Debating Christian Religious Epistemology: An Introduction to Five Views on the Knowledge of God. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 8. ISBN 9781350062726. https://books.google.com/books?id=x6TDDwAAQBAJ. Retrieved 19 July 2026. "[...] the justified true belief account of knowledge (or tripartite theory of knowledge) requires that true beliefs possess a sufficient degree of justification in order to count as knowledge. It is widely believed, however, that Edmund Gettier's paper 'Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?' signaled the demise of the tripartite theory of knowledge."
12. ↑ Wilkins, John S.; Griffiths, Paul E. (2012). "Evolutionary debunking arguments in three domains". in Dawes, Gregory; Maclaurin, James. A New Science of Religion. Routledge. pp. 133–146. doi:10.4324/9780203086131-14. ISBN 9781138108929.
13. ↑ Visala, Aku; Vainio, Olli-Pekka (November 13, 2018). "Philosophy of religion and the scientific turn". Palgrave Communications. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-018-0190-9.
14. ↑ Van Eyghen, Hans (2023). Arguing From Cognitive Science of Religion. Is Religious Belief Debunked?. Bloomsbury Academic. https://research.tilburguniversity.edu/files/112741327/Arguing_from_Cognitive_Science_of_Religion_-_Hans_van_Eyghen.pdf.

## External links

* Matthew A. Benton, "Revitalizing the Epistemology of Religion". Oxford University Press blog, retrieved June 17, 2018.
* "Religious Epistemology". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/relig-ep.

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