Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. God and the Reach of Reason
  • Cited by 4
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2012
Print publication year:
2007
Online ISBN:
9781139167444
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139167444
Subjects:
Religion, Religion: General Interest
Information

Book description

C. S. Lewis is one of the most beloved Christian apologists of the twentieth century; David Hume and Bertrand Russell are among Christianity's most important critics. This book puts these three intellectual giants in conversation with one another to shed light on some of life's most difficult yet important questions. It examines their views on a variety of topics, including the existence of God, suffering, morality, reason, joy, miracles, and faith. Along with irreconcilable differences and points of tension, some surprising areas of agreement emerge. Today, amidst the often shrill and vapid exchanges between 'new atheists' and twenty-first-century believers, curious readers will find penetrating insights in the reasoned dialogue of these three great thinkers.

Reviews

'God and the Reach of Reason is an enjoyable and informative read. Lewis scholars will have to decide whether it accurately represents his views and arguments. Wielenberg's presentation of what he takes to be the views and arguments is extremely clear, and his criticisms of them fair and charitable. … I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a critical interpretation and assessment of C. S. Lewis's views on religion.'

Bruce Russell Source: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

'One of the greatest strengths of the book is its systematic presentation of the arguments as a series of interrelated propositions, so that the reader can grasp exactly what is at stake. A very worthwhile book for philosophically minded readers.'

Source: Network Review

'This is a well written book that can catch the attention of a wide readership interested in theology, ethics and the philosophy of religion.'

Source: Russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents
References
References
References
Adams, Douglas. 2002. The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. New York: Ballantine Books.
Adams, Marilyn McCord. 1990. “Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God,” in The Problem of Evil, ed. Adams, Marilyn McCord and Adams, Robert Merrihew. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Adams, Robert. 1999. Finite and Infinite Goods. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Alexander, Samuel. 1950. Space, Time, and Deity, Vol. II. New York: Macmillan.
Alston, William. 2002. “What Euthyphro Should Have Said,” in Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide, ed. Craig, William Lane. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Anscombe, G. E. M. 1981. “A Reply to Mr. C. S. Lewis's Argument That ‘Naturalism’ Is Self-Refuting,” in The Collected Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe Volume II: Metaphyics and the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Aquinas, Thomas. 1947. Summa Theologica. New York: Benziger Brothers Inc.
Armstrong, Karen. 1993. A History of God. New York: Ballantine Books.
Augustine, . 1993. Confessions, revised edition, trans. F. J Sheed. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Augustine, . 1993. On Free Choice of the Will, trans. T. Williams. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Ayer, A. J. 2000. Hume: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beilby, J. K., ed. 2002. Naturalism Defeated? Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Bernstein, R. B.Thomas Jefferson. 2003. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beversluis, John. 1985. C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Buss, David M. 2004. Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, second edition. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
Chessick, Richard. 1995. Who does he think he is: Remarks on the psychology of Jesus. American Journal of Psychoanalysis 55:1: 29–39.
Clarke, Samuel. 2000. “A Discourse Concerning the Unalterable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelations,” in Earman, John (ed.), Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument against Miracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Craig, William Lane, and Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter. 2004. God? A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cudworth, Ralph. 1996. A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, ed. Hutton, S.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dawkins, Richard. 2006. The God Delusion. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Dennett, Daniel. 1996. Kinds of Minds. New York: Basic Books.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 1981. The Brothers Karamazov, trans. A. H. MacAndrew. New York: Bantam Books.
Draper, Paul. 1989. Pain and pleasure: An evidential problem for theists. NOUS 23: 331–50.
Dworkin, Ronald W. 2006. Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers.
Earman, John, ed. 2000. Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument against Miracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Feldman, Richard. 2003. Epistemology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Fine, Cordelia. 2006. A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives. New York: Norton.
Fogelin, Robert. 2003. A Defense of Hume on Miracles. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Freeman, Charles. 2005. The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason. New York: Vintage Books.
Gaskin, J. C. A. 1988. Hume's Philosophy of Religion, second edition. Atlantic Highlands, NJ:Humanities Press International.
Glover, Jonathan. 2000. Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.
Goldie, Peter. 2004. On Personality. New York: Routledge.
Grayling, A. C. 2002. Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Greene, Graham. 1986. “The Second Death,” in Collected Short Stories. New York: Penguin Books.
Hare, Robert D. 1999. Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths among Us. New York: The Guilford Press.
Harris, Samuel. 2004. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: Norton.
Hasker, William. 1999. The Emergent Self. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Hauser, Marc. 2006. Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong. New York: HarperCollins.
Heumer, Michael. 2005. Ethical Intuitionism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Holyer, Robert. 1988. The argument from desire. Faith and Philosophy 5:1: 61–70.
Holyer, Robert. 1988 C. S. Lewis – the rationalist?Christian Scholar's Review 18:2: 148–67.
Hooper, Walter, ed. 1993. Letters of C. S. Lewis, revised edition. Orlando, FL: Harcourt.
Hooper, Walter, ed. 2004. The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume II: Books, Broadcasts, and the War 1931–1949. New York: HarperCollins.
Howard-Snyder, Daniel. 1996. The Evidential Argument from Evil. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Howard-Snyder, Daniel. 1999. “God, Evil, and Suffering,” in Reason for the Hope Within, ed. Michael, J. Murray. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Howard-Snyder, Daniel. 2004. Was Jesus mad, bad, or God? … or merely mistaken. Faith and Philosophy 21:4: 456–79.
Hume, David. 1943. “My Own Life,” in The Forgotten Hume, ed. E. C. Mossner. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hume, David. 1978. A Treatise of Human Nature, second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hume, David. 1990. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, third edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hume, David. 1993. Dialogues and Natural History of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hume, David. 1998. “Of Superstition and Enthusiasm,” in Selected Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hume, David. 1998. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, second edition. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Hurka, Thomas. 2001. Virtue, Vice, and Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Joshi, S. T. 2003. “Surprised by Folly: C. S. Lewis,” in God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Kahane, Howard. 1990. Logic and Philosophy: A Modern Introduction, sixth edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Kant, Immanuel. 1930. Lectures on Ethics, trans. L. Infield. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Kant, Immanuel. 1996. The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. M. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Koestler, Arthur. 1967. The Ghost in the Machine. New York: Macmillan.
Kreeft, Peter. 1989. “C. S. Lewis's Argument from Desire,” in G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis: The Riddle of Joy, ed. MacDonald, M. H. and Tadie, A. A.. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Leibniz, G. W. 1985. Theodicy, trans. E. M. Huggard. LaSalle, IL: Open Court.
Lewis, C. S. 1955. “On Obstinacy in Belief,” in The World's Last Night and Other Essays. New York: Harcourt.
Lewis, C. S.. 1955. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. New York: Harcourt.
Lewis, C. S.. 1960. The Four Loves. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Lewis, C. S.. 1970. “Man or Rabbit,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Lewis, C. S.. 1970. “Meditation on the Third Commandment,” in God in the Dock.
Lewis, C. S.. 1970. “On the Transmission of Christianity,” in God in the Dock.
Lewis, C. S.. 1970. “Religion without Dogma?” in God in the Dock.
Lewis, C. S.. 1984. Till We Have Faces. New York: Harcourt.
Lewis, C. S.. 1995a. “The Poison of Subjectivism,” in Christian Reflections. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Lewis, C. S.. 1995b. “Religion: Reality or Substitute?” in Christian Reflections.
Lewis, C. S.. 1996. The Screwtape Letters. New York: Touchstone.
Lewis, C. S.. 2001. The Abolition of Man. New York: HarperCollins.
Lewis, C. S.. 2001. A Grief Observed. New York: HarperCollins.
Lewis, C. S.. 2001. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperCollins.
Lewis, C. S.. 2001. Miracles: A Preliminary Study. New York: HarperCollins.
Lewis, C. S.. 2001. The Problem of Pain. New York: HarperCollins.
Lewis, C. S.. 2001. “The Weight of Glory,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. New York: HarperCollins.
Lewis, C. S.. 2001. “Why I Am Not a Pacifist,” in The Weight of Glory.
Lewis, C. S.. 2002. All My Road before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis, 1922–1927. New York: Harvest Books.
Lovell, Steve. 2003. “Philosophical Themes from C. S. Lewis.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Sheffield.
McGinn, Colin. 1997. Ethics, Evil, and Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McGinn, Colin. 1999. The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World. New York: Basic Books.
Mill, John Stuart. 1998. Three Essays on Religion. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Miller, Caleb. 1999. “Faith and Reason,” in Reason for the Hope Within, ed. Michael, J. Murray. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Montaigne, de, Michel. 1966. “That to Philosophize Is to Learn to Die,” in Essays. Chicago: The Great Books Foundation.
Mounce, H. O. 1999. Hume's Naturalism. New York: Routledge.
Neiman, Susan. 2002. Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Newberg, Andrew, D'Aquili, Eugene, andRause, Vince. 2001. Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. New York: Ballantine Books.
Nisbett, R. E., and Wilson, T. D. 1977. Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review 84: 231–59.
Nisbett, R. E., and Ross, L. 1980. Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
O'Connor, David. 2001. Hume on Religion. New York: Routledge.
Paine, Thomas. 1948. The Age of Reason. New York: Citadel Press.
Penelhum, Terence. 2000. “Natural Belief and Religious Belief in Hume's Philosophy,” in Themes in Hume: The Self, the Will, Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Penelhum, Terence. 2000. “Religion in the Enquiry and After,” in Themes in Hume.
Peterson, Michael L., ed. 1992. The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Petrik, James. 1994. In defense of C. S. Lewis's analysis of God's goodness. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 36: 45–56.
Pinker, Steven. 2002. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking.
Pinker, Steven. 2006. “Evolution and Ethics,” in Intelligent Thought, ed. Brockman, J.. New York: Vintage Books.
Plantinga, Alvin. 1998. “The Free Will Defense,” in The Analytic Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader, ed. Sennett, J. F.. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Plantinga, Alvin. 1998. “Reason and Belief in God,” in The Analytic Theist.
Plato, . 1977. Phaedo, trans. G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Plato, . 2002. Five Dialogues, second edition, trans. G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Reppert, Victor. 2003. C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Reppert, Victor. 2005. “The Green Witch and the Great Debate: Freeing Narnia from the Spell of the Lewis-Anscombe Legend,” in The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy, ed. Bassham, Greg and Walls, Jerry. Chicago: Open Court.
Rochefoucauld, François duc. 1959. Maxims, trans. L. Kronenberger. New York: Random House.
Rowe, William. 1979. The problem of evil and some varieties of atheism. American Philosophical Quarterly 16: 335–41.
Russell, Bertrand. 1957. “A Free Man's Worship,” in Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Russell, Bertrand. 1957. “Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?” in Not a Christian.
Russell, Bertrand. 1957. “What I Believe,” in Not a Christian.
Russell, Bertrand. 1959. The Problems of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Russell, Bertrand. 1965. “How to Grow Old,” in Portraits from Memory. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Russell, Bertrand. 1986. “The Faith of a Rationalist,” in Bertrand Russell on God and Religion, ed. Seckel, A.. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
Russell, Bertrand. 1986. “Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?”, in Russell on God and Religion.
Russell, Bertrand. 1986. “The Value of Free Thought,” in Russell on God and Religion.
Russell, Bertrand, and Copleston, F. C. 1999. “A Debate on the Existence of God,” in Russell on Religion, ed. Greenspan, L. and Andersson, S.. New York: Routledge.
Russell, Bertrand. 1999. “The Essence of Religion,” in Russell on Religion.
Russell, Bertrand. 1999. “The Existence and Nature of God,” in Russell on Religion.
Russell, Bertrand. 1999. “From ‘My Mental Development’ and ‘Reply to Criticisms’,” in Russell on Religion.
Russell, Bertrand. 1999. “Science and Religion,” in Russell on Religion.
Russell, Bertrand. 1999. “The Sense of Sin,” in Russell on Religion.
Russell, Bertrand. 1999. “Why I Am Not a Christian,” in Russell on Religion.
Russell, Betrand. 2000. Autobiography. London: Routledge.
Sennett, James F., and Groothius, Douglas, eds. 2005. In Defense of Natural Theology: A Post-Humean Assessment. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Senor, Thomas D. 2005. “Trusting Lucy: Believing the Incredible,” in The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy, ed. Bassham, Greg and Walls, Jerry. Chicago: Open Court.
Sessions, William Lad. 2002. Reading Hume's Dialogues: A Veneration for True Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Shafer-Landau, Russ. 2005. Moral Realism: A Defence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sherlock, Thomas. 2000. The Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus, eleventh edition (1729), in Earman, John (ed), Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument against Miracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shermer, Michael. 2004. The Science of Good and Evil. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Singer, Peter. 1995. How Are We to Live? Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Smith, Quentin. 1998. Ethical and Religious Thought in Analytic Philosophy of Language. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Stout, Martha. 2005. The Sociopath Next Door. New York: Broadway Books.
Sumption, Jonathan. 1978. The Albigensian Crusade. London: Faber and Faber.
Talbott, Thomas. 1987. C. S. Lewis and the problem of evil. Christian Scholar's Review 17: 36–51.
Taliaferro, Charles. 2005. Evidence and Faith: Philosophy and Religion since the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tolstoy, Leo. 1981. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, trans. L. Solotaroff. New York: Bantam Books.
Peter, Inwagen. 1993. Metaphysics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
van Inwagen, Peter. 1994. “Quam Dilecta,” in God and the Philosophers: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason, ed. Thomas, V. Morris. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Peter, Inwagen. 1995. “The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: A Theodicy,” in God, Knowledge, and Mystery: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Voltaire, . 1959. Candide, trans. L. Bair. New York: Bantam Books.
Vonnegut, Kurt. 1998. The Sirens of Titan. New York: Dell.
Wainwright, William. 2005. Religion and Morality. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Walls, Jerry. 1990. Hume on divine amorality. Religious Studies 26: 257–66.
Wielenberg, Erik. 2000. Omnipotence again. Faith and Philosophy 17:1: 26–47.
Wielenberg, Erik. 2002. How to be an alethically rational naturalist. Synthese 131:1: 81–98.
Wielenberg, Erik. 2005. “Aslan the Terrible: Painful Encounters with Absolute Goodness,” in The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy, ed. Bassham, Greg and Walls, Jerry. Chicago: Open Court.
Wielenberg, Erik. 2005. Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wielenberg, Erik. 2006. Response to Maria Antonaccio. Conversations in Religion and Theology 4:2: 219–24.
Woodward, Kenneth L. 2005. “Countless Souls Cry Out to God,” Newsweek, January 10.
Wright, Robert. 1994. The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life. New York: Random House.
Wykstra, Stephen J. 1984. The Humean obstacle to evidential arguments from suffering: On avoiding the evils of “appearance.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 16: 73–93.

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.