Contents
1. Introduction: The Problem of Faith and Reason -- pg.1
2. Fideism as Irrationalism -- pg.16
3. Faith Without Reasons: Is Faith Based on Evidence? -- pg.36
4. Faith Above Reason: Aquinas -- pg.55
5. Faith Above Reason: Kant -- pg.65
6. Faith Above Reason: Kierkegaard -- pg.78
7. Faith Against Reason: Kierkegaard -- pg.93
8. A Fideistic Account of Knowing God -- pg.114
9. Faith and the Problem of Evil -- pg.126
10. Faith and Doctrines Known by Revelation -- pg.138
Bibliography -- pg.155
Index -- pg.160

Why do people believe in their chosen faith? What rational justifications do they use to understand their faith? The REASON AND RELIGION series was created to introduce students and educated general readers to the different rational approaches used by believers both in the past and in the contemporary world. Dealing with complicated issues in practical and accessible ways, these volumes explore some of faiths most challenging philosophical questions.
This volume provides an explanation and defense of a view of faith and reason found in the writings of Soren 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 deep¬ened 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.