Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview

by J. P. Moreland; William Lane Craig

Publisher:

IVP Academic

, 2017

Overview

There are fundamental questions that any thinking person wants answers to. What is real? What is truth? What can we know? What should we believe? What should we do and why? Is there a God? Can we know him? These are questions that philosophy addresses. And the answers we give to these kinds of questions serve as the foundation stones for constructing any kind of worldview.

Now updated and expanded in this second edition, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview by J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig offers a comprehensive introduction to philosophy from a Christian perspective. In their broad sweep they seek to introduce readers to the principal subdisciplines of philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, ethics, and philosophy of religion. They do so with characteristic clarity and incisiveness. Arguments are clearly outlined, and rival theories are presented with fairness and accuracy.

Key Features

• Lays out a comprehensive survey of the field of philosophy from a Christian perspective
• Emphasizes the centrality of understanding the Christian worldview
• Goes into detail about philosophy's subdisciplines, such as epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics

Contents

• An Invitation to Christian Philosophy
• Part I: Introduction
  • What Is Philosophy?
  • Argumentation and Logic
• Part II: Epistemology
  • Knowledge and Rationality
  • The Problem of Skepticism
  • The Structure of Justification
  • Theories of Truth and Postmodernism
  • Religious Epistemology
• Part III: Metaphysics
  • What Is Metaphysics?
  • General Ontology: Existence, Identity, and Reductionism
  • General Ontology: Two Categories? Property and Substance
  • The Mind-Body Problem Part IA: Consciousness and Property Dualism or Mere-Property Dualism
  • The Mind-Body Problem Part IB: Alternatives to Property Dualism or Mere-Property Dualism
  • The Mind-Body Problem Part IIA: Arguments Regarding and Versions of Substance Dualism
  • The Mind-Body Problem Part IIB: The Main Physicalist Alternatives to Substance Dualism
  • Free Will and Determinism
  • Personal Identity and Life After Death
• Part IV: Philosophy of Science
  • Scientific Methodology
  • The Realism-Antirealism Debate
  • Philosophy and the Integration of Science and Theology
  • Philosophy of Time and Space
• Part V: Ethics
  • Ethics, Morality, and Metaethics
  • Ethical Relativism and Absolutism
  • Normative Ethical Theories: Egoism and Utilitarianism
  • Normative Ethical Theories: Deontological and Virtue Ethics
• Part VI: Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology
  • The Existence of God I
  • The Existence of God II
  • The Coherence of Theism I
  • The Coherence of Theism II
  • The Problem of Evil
  • Creation, Providence, and Miracle
  • Christian Doctrines I: The Trinity
  • Christian Doctrines II: The Incarnation
  • Christian Doctrines III: Atonement
  • Christian Doctrines IV: Christian Particularism
• Suggestions for Further Reading

Top Highlights

“What makes for a good argument? That depends. Arguments may be either deductive or inductive. In a good deductive argument the premises guarantee the truth of their conclusions. In a good inductive argument the premises render the conclusion more probable than its competitors. What makes for a good argument depends on whether that argument is deductive or inductive.” (Page 28)

“A good deductive argument will be one that is formally and informally valid, that has true premises, and whose premises, taken together, are more plausible than their contradictories.” (Page 28)

“Philosophy, Alvin Plantinga has remarked, is just thinking hard about something. If that is the case, then doing good philosophy will be a matter of learning to think well. That serves to differentiate philosophy from mere emotional expressions of what we feel to be true or hopeful expressions of what we wish to be true. What, then, does it mean to think well? It will involve, among other things, the ability to formulate and assess arguments for various claims to truth. When we speak of arguments for a position, we do not, of course, mean quarreling about it. Rather, an argument in the philosophical sense is a set of statements that serve as premises leading to a conclusion.” (Page 28)

“Further, philosophy can help to extend biblical teaching into areas where the Bible is not explicit.” (Page 17)

“One of the awesome tasks of Christian philosophers is to help turn the contemporary intellectual tide in such a way as to foster a sociocultural milieu in which Christian faith can be regarded as an intellectually credible option for thinking men and women.” (Page 4)

Endorsements

Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview has been the book I most frequently recommend for those desiring a clearly-written, distinctively Christian overview of the key subdisciplines of philosophy. So I am pleased that this volume is now in an updated second edition, written by two influential Christian philosophers whose academic work, personal integrity, and warm friendship have had an impact on my own life and writings over the years.

—Paul Copan, professor, Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics, Palm Beach Atlantic University

Addressing some of the most important questions concerning the relationship between faith and reason, Craig and Moreland provide the serious student of philosophy a coherent and tightly argued account of the intellectual credentials of Christian belief. Although I sometimes find myself disagreeing with them (e.g., on divine simplicity and timelessness), their mastery of philosophical argument is impressive.

—Francis J. Beckwith, professor of philosophy, Baylor University

Moreland and Craig have taken a great text and made it even better. Since the original publication of Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview in 2003, it has risen to the top of the pyramid as a resource for Christian students and scholars in expounding and defending the philosophical basis for the Christian worldview. The comprehensiveness of this text is overwhelming and now has been made even better with updates including new chapters on substance dualism, new evidence for the Kalam argument and the fine-tuning argument, an updated section on divine aseity, and a whole new chapter on the atonement. While accessible to the new student, it also offers the depth required for the graduate philosophy student. As the authors themselves affirm, 'This is no bedtime reading!' It will require hard work but pays off like no other philosophy book I am aware of.

—Mark W. Foreman, professor of philosophy, Liberty University

Product Details

• Title: Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview
• Authors: J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig
• Edition: 2nd
• Publisher: IVP
• Publication Date: 2017
• Pages: 708
• Christian Group: Evangelicals
• Resource Type: Introduction
• Topic: Philosophy and Worldviews

About the Authors

J. P. Moreland (PhD, University of Southern California) is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, in La Mirada, California. He is the author, coauthor, or contributor to over ninety-five books, including Does God Exist?, Universals, The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, Consciousness and the Existence of God, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, In Search of a Confident Faith, Love Your God With All Your Mind, The God Question, and Debating Christian Theism.

William Lane Craig (PhD, University of Birmingham, England) is professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and at Houston Baptist University. Craig has authored or edited over forty books, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom; God, Time, and Eternity; and God and Abstract Objects, as well as over 150 articles in professional publications of philosophy and theology, including The Journal of Philosophy, and New Testament Studies.