Three features of the revival are especially noteworthy. The first was a renewed interest
in the scholastics and in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophical theology.
There were at least two reasons for this. One was the discovery that issues central to the
debates of the 1960s and 1970s had already been examined with a sophistication and
depth lacking in most nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discussions of the same
problems. The other was the fact that a significant number of analytic philosophers of
religion were practicing Christian or Jewish theists. Figures such as Aquinas, Scotus,
Maimonides, Samuel Clark, and Jonathan Edwards were attractive models for these
philosophers for two reasons. There is a broad similarity between the philosophical
approaches of these medieval and early modern thinkers and contemporary analytic
philosophers: precise definitions, careful distinctions, and rigorous argumentation are
features of both. In addition, these predecessors were self-consciously Jewish or
Christian; a conviction of the truth or splendor of Judaism or Christianity pervades their
work. They were thus appealing models for contemporary philosophers of religion with
similar commitments.
A second feature of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion is the wide array of
topics it addresses. The first fifteen years or so of the period in question were dominated
by discussions of issues traditionally central to the philosophy of religion: Is the concept
of God coherent? Are there good reasons for thinking that God exists? Is the existence of
evil a decisive reason for denying God's existence? However, beginning in the 1980s, a
number of Christian analytic philosophers turned their attention to such specifically
Christian doctrines as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement. Most of the
articles and books on these topics were attempts to show that the doctrines in question
were coherent or rational. But some were more interested in the bearing of theological
doctrines on problems internal to the traditions that include them. Marilyn Adams, for
example, has argued that Christian martyrdom and Christ's passion have important
implications for Christian responses to the problem of evil, and Robert Oakes has made
similar claims for the Jewish mystical doctrine of God's withdrawal (tzimzum). Still other
analytic philosophers of religion have tried to show that theism can cast light on problems
in other areas of philosophy—that it can give a better account of the logical features of
natural laws, for example, or of the nature of
end p.
numbers, sets, and other mathematical objects, or of the apparent objectivity of moral
claims.^2 (On the last, see chapter 14.)
A third characteristic of recent philosophy of religion is its turn toward epistemology.
Medieval and seventeenth-century philosophical theology exhibited a feature that has
been insufficiently appreciated since the eighteenth century and is especially prominent
in Augustine and Anselm: its devotional setting. Anselm's inquiry, for instance, is
punctuated by prayers to arouse his emotions and stir his will. His inquiry is a divine-
human collaboration in which he continually prays for assistance and offers praise and
thanksgiving for the light he has received. His project as a whole is framed by a desire to
“contemplate God” or “see God's face.” Anselm's attempt to understand what he believes
by finding reasons for it is largely a means to this end.^3 Several hundred years later,