Description
Paul Helm is a distinguished philosopher, with particular interests in the philosophy of religion. His work covers some of the most important aspects of the field as it has developed in the last thirty years with particular contributions to metaphysics, religious epistemology, and philosophical theology. In celebration of Helm’s life’s work, Reason in the Service of Faith brings together a range of his essays which reflect these central concerns of his thought.
Over thirty of Helm's selected essays and four unpublished articles are gathered into five parts: Metaphilosophical Issues; Action, Change, and Personal Identity; Epistemology; God; and Creation, Providence, and Prayer. The volume is prefaced with a short editorial introduction, and ends with an extensive bibliography of Helm’s published works.
Demonstrating the important connection between Helm’s theological and philosophical interests across his body of work, this collection is a remarkable resource for scholars of religion, philosophy, and theology.
Table of Contents
Preface
Editor's Introduction
Part 1. Metaphilosophical Issues
1. On Pancritical Irrationalism
2. Understanding Scholarly Presuppositions
3. The Perfect and the Particular
4. A Plea for Objectivity
5. Anthropomorphism Protestant Style: Two Current Approaches
Part 2. Action, Change and Personal Identity
6. Pretending and Intending
7. Pike on Prior on Action
8. Are 'Cambridge Changes' Non-events?
9. Detecting Change
10. A Theory of Disembodied Survival and Re-embodied Existence
11. Locke's Theory of Personal Identity Part 3. Epistemology
12. Revealed Propositions and Timeless Truths
13. Locke on Faith and Knowledge
14. Does the Authority of a Tradition Exclude the Possibility of Change?
15. Two Ideas of Revelation
16. Speaking and Revealing
17. The Indispensability of Belief to Religion
18. Wittgensteinian Religion and 'Reformed' Epistemology
19. Why was Thomas Reid not a 'Reformed' Epistemologist?
20. Faith, Evidence and the Scriptures
Part 4. God
21. God and Whatever Comes to Pass
22. Grace and Causation
23. God and Spacelessness
24. The Impossibility of Divine Impassibility
25. Omniscience and Eternity
26. Divine Timeless Eternity
27. The Augustinian-Calvinist View
28. Eternal Creation
29. The Problem of Dialogue
30. Divine Causation and Analogy
Part 5. Creation, Providence and Prayer
31. Universalism and the Threat of Hell
32. Asking God
33. Prayer and Providence
34. Preserving Perseverance
35. Providence and Compatibilism
36. The Plan of God
37. Starting to Be and Ceasing to Be
38. Can God Love the World?
39. All Things Considered: Providence and Divine Purpose
40. Of God's Eternal Decree
Bibliography: Publications of Paul Helm
Index
