Faith Beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account (Reason & Religion)

This volume provides an explanation and defense of a view of faith and reason found in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and others that is often called fideism. Carefully distinguishing indefensible forms of fideism that involve a rejection of reason from responsible forms of fideism that require reason to become self-critical, C. Stephen Evans unfolds a Kierkegaardian view that genuine religious knowledge is grounded in faith beyond reason. / Three versions of responsible fideism are discussed and analyzed. First, Evans looks at faith without reasons, illustrating this form of attack on evidentialism with the thought of Alvin Plantinga and William James. Next, Evans considers the form of fideism that understands faith as above reason, a view exemplified by Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant. Finally, Evans examines the form of fideism that claims that faith must go against what is taken as rational by most human societies. This position is most clearly displayed in the writings of Kierkegaard. Evans here defends the Kierkegaardian view that genuine religious knowledge is grounded in faith beyond reason by analyzing faith as making possible a critical analysis of the limits of reason that reason itself can recognize as sound. Evans’s discussion is deepened by concrete examples of how fideists might view three traditional topics in philosophy of religion: the knowledge of God’s existence, the problem of evil, and the verifiability of divine revelation.