rational credentials of claims about it. Continental philosophy of religion has tended to
focus on religion and the human subject; it has also been more concerned with religion's
ethical implications, especially its bearing on oppression and liberation.
The isolation of the two traditions is unfortunate because each needs what the other has to
offer. Analytic philosophers of religion, for instance, need to take the hermeneutics of
suspicion seriously, for, as Merold Westphal has said, they have been largely blind “to
the cognitive implications of finitude and sin.”^7 As a result, they have usually ignored the
ideological uses and abuses of theistic metaphysics and the ethical issues this raises. The
critiques of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Jacques Derrida, and contemporary feminists can
and should alert analytic philosophers of religion to these perils (see chapters 19 and 20).
Continental philosophers of religion, on the other hand, too often ignore questions of
truth and rational adequacy. This is unfortunate for two closely related reasons. The first
is ethical: we fail to respect the men and women whose beliefs and practices we examine
if we don't treat their claims to truth and rational superiority with the same seriousness
that they do. The second is this: if Christianity, say, or Buddhism is true, it matters
infinitely. So if either is a live possibility, a deeply serious concern with its truth or
falsity, its reasonableness or unreasonableness, is the only rational option. Inattention or
indifference to the truth and rational credentials of the traditions one examines is a clear
indication that one doesn't take them as live possibilities, and hence doesn't invest them
with the same importance or seriousness that their adherents do.
end p.
There are some indications that analytic and continental philosophers of religion are
beginning to learn from each other. One can only hope that this trend increases in the
future.
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion is divided into two parts. Part 1 covers
the most frequently discussed problems in the field. Part 2 consists of essays assessing
the advantages and disadvantages of the four currently most influential ways of doing
philosophy of religion; each is by a well-known practitioner of the way he or she
discusses. The essays in Part 2 are a unique feature of this volume and are important for
two reasons. First, one's philosophical approach affects one's selection of problems and
the way one frames them, and this, in turn, affects one's results. For example, followers
of Emmanuel Levinas or feminist philosophers of religion have different takes on the
problem of evil than do analytic philosophers. No picture of the philosophy of religion
that ignores them can be complete. Second, although the analytic approach dominates the
practice of philosophy of religion in English-speaking countries and is beginning to make
significant inroads on the continent, there are other historically important and potentially
illuminating ways of doing philosophy of religion. It is therefore important that a general
reference work of this sort acquaint the reader with the variety of approaches to the
discipline.
The twenty chapters of this volume are written by prominent experts in the field. Each
chapter is expository, critical, and representative of a distinctive viewpoint. In being
expository, the chapters formulate and elucidate important competing positions on their
topic (e.g., religious experience or the problem of evil) or the history and nature of the
philosophical approach to the philosophy of religion that they are discussing (the