Abstract

The next four chapters are devoted to consideration of the doxastic component of faith. In Chapter 2, Helm defends the claim of Alvin Plantinga’s version of Reformed epistemology that belief in the existence of God is properly basic in certain conditions against some objections raised by Anthony Kenny. Making use of the Quinean metaphor of a web of belief, he argues in Chapter 3 that the rationality of belief in a developed religion such as Christianity is best defended in terms of a coherentist approach to epistemic justification. Taking issue with Basil Mitchell, he tries to show in Chapter 4 that, because of the nature of religious belief, it is not a necessary condition for conflicting religious beliefs being rationally held that disagreements in belief be capable in principle of being resolved by rational means. And in Chapter 5, he tentatively endorses the view that, because one’s moral sensibility or passional nature is sometimes needed to evaluate evidence properly, particularly in situations in which the evidence itself is moral in character, properly functioning moral capacities are needed to appraise correctly “evidence related to the existence and character of a God who has a moral character as an essential part of his nature”.