Richard Swinburne

Academic career

Swinburne received an Open Scholarship to study classics at Exeter College, Oxford, but in fact graduated with a first class BA in philosophy, politics, and economics. Swinburne has held various professorships through his career in academia. From 1972 to 1985 he taught at Keele University. During part of this time, he gave the Gifford lectures at Aberdeen from 1982 to 1984, resulting in the book The Evolution of the Soul. From 1985 until his retirement in 2002 he was Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford (his successor in this chair is Brian Leftow). He has continued to publish regularly since his retirement.

Swinburne has been an active author throughout his career, producing a major book every two to three years. He has played an important role in recent debate over the mind-body problem, defending a substance dualism that recalls the work of Rene Descartes in important respects. See The Evolution of the Soul, 1997.

His books are primarily very technical works of academic philosophy, but he has written at the popular level as well. Of the non-technical works, his Is There a God? (1996), summarising for a non-specialist audience many of his arguments for the existence of God and plausibility in the belief of that existence, is probably the most popular, and is available in 22 languages.

Christian apologetics

A member of the Orthodox Church, he is noted as one of the foremost Christian apologists, arguing in his many articles and books that faith in Christianity is rational and coherent in a rigorous philosophical sense. William Hasker writes that his "tetralogy on Christian doctrine, together with his earlier trilogy on the philosophy of theism, is one of the most important apologetic projects of recent times." While Swinburne presents many arguments to advance the belief that God exists, he argues that God is a being whose existence is not logically necessary (see modal logic), but metaphysically necessary in a way he defines in his The Christian God. Other subjects on which Swinburne writes include personal identity (in which he espouses a view based on the concept of a soul), and epistemic justification. He has written in defence of Cartesian dualism and libertarian free will.

Though he is best known for his vigorous rational defence of Christian intellectual commitments, he also has a theory of the nature of passionate faith which is developed in his book Faith and Reason.

According to an interview Swinburne did with Foma magazine, he converted from Anglicanism (Church of England) to Eastern Orthodoxy around 1996:

I don't think I changed my beliefs in any significant way. I always believed in the Apostolic succession: that the Church has to have its authority dating back to the Apostles, and the general teaching of the Orthodox Church on the saints and the prayers for the departed and so on, these things I have always believed.

Swinburne's philosophical method reflects the influence of Thomas Aquinas. He admits that he draws from Aquinas a systematic approach to philosophical theology. Swinburne, like Aquinas, moves from basic philosophical issues (for example, the question of the possibility that God may exist in Swinburne's The Coherence of Theism), to more specific Christian beliefs (for example, the claim in Swinburne's Revelation that God has communicated to human beings propositionally in Jesus Christ).

Swinburne moves in his writing program from the philosophical to the theological, building his case rigorously, and relying on his previous arguments as he defends particular Christian beliefs. He has attempted to reassert classical Christian beliefs with an apologetic method that he believes is compatible with contemporary science. That method relies heavily on inductive logic, seeking to show that his Christian beliefs fit best with the evidence.

Swinburne's categories

Swinburne formulated five categories into which all religious experiences fall:

Public ordinary – a believer 'sees God's hand at work', whereas other explanations are cited (e.g., looking at a beautiful sunset).

Public extraordinary – an unusual event that breaches natural law (e.g., walking on water).

Private describable using normal language – e.g., Jacob's vision of a ladder.

Private indescribable using normal language – usually a mystical experience (e.g., "White did not cease to be white, nor black cease to be black, but black became white and white became black.").

Private non-specific – a general feeling of God working in one's life.

Swinburne also coined two principles for the assessment of religious experiences:

Principle of Credulity – with the absence of any reason to disbelieve it, one should accept what appears to be true (e.g., if one sees someone walking on water, one should believe that it is occurring)

Principle of Testimony – with the absence of any reason to disbelieve them, one should accept that eyewitnesses or believers are telling the truth when they testify about religious experiences.

Major books

Space and Time, 1968

The Concept of Miracle, 1970,

The Coherence of Theism, 1977 (new edition 2016) (part 1 of his trilogy on Theism)

The Existence of God, 1979 (new edition 2004). (part 2 of his trilogy on Theism)

Faith and Reason, 1981 (new edition 2005). (part 3 of his trilogy on Theism)

The Evolution of the Soul, 1986, ISBN 0-19-823698-0. (1997 edition online)

Miracles, 1989

Responsibility and Atonement, 1989 (part 1 of his tetralogy on Christian Doctrines)

Revelation, 1991 (part 2 of his tetralogy on Christian Doctrines)

The Christian God, 1994 (part 3 of his tetralogy on Christian Doctrines)

Is There a God?, 1996, ISBN 0-19-823545-3

Simplicity as Evidence of Truth, The Aquinas Lecture, 1997

Providence and the Problem of Evil, 1998 (part 4 of his tetralogy on Christian Doctrines)

Epistemic Justification, 2001

The Resurrection of God Incarnate, 2003

Was Jesus God?, 2008

Free Will and Modern Science, Ed. 2011, ISBN 978-0197264898

Mind, Brain, and Free Will, 2013

Spiritual autobiography

Richard Swinburne, "The Vocation of a Natural Theologian," in Philosophers Who Believe, Kelly James Clark, ed. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993), pp. 179–202.