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The Fragility of Faith: Toward a Critique of Reformed Epistemology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

David Wisdo
Affiliation:
Divinity School, Yale University, Connecticut, U.S.A.

Extract

Human thought is unable to acknowledge the reality of affliction. To acknowledge affliction means saying to oneself: I may lose at any moment, through the play of circumstances over which I have no control, anything whatsoever I possess, including those things which are so intimately mine that I consider them as being myself. There is nothing that I might not lose.(Simon Weil)

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

page 365 note 1 Weil, Simone, ‘Human Personality’, in The Simone Weil Reader, ed. Panichas, George A. (New York: David McKay, 1977), p. 332.Google Scholar

page 365 note 2 This turn of phrase is intended as a reminder that this essay is in keeping with the spirit of Nussbaum's, MarthaThe Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

page 365 note 3 Plantinga, Alvin, ‘Reason and Belief in God’, in Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 1693.Google Scholar

page 367 note 1 For a more detailed treatment of what can constitute a ‘defeater’ as well as a ‘defeater for a defeater’, see Foley, Richard, The Epistemic Theory of Rationality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 18 if.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The distinction between potential and genuine defeaters is treated on pp. 42 ff

page 368 note 1 Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Gay Science, trans. Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Viking Press, 1974), Pp. 245–6.Google Scholar

page 368 note 2 Taylor, Charles, ‘Self-Interpreting Animals’, in Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers, 1 (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 4576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 369 note 1 Williams, Bernard, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1993–1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1981), Pp. 119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 369 note 2 Ibid. p. 12.

page 369 note 3 Kierkegaard, Soren, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Swenson, David F. and Lowrie, Walter (Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 19.Google Scholar

page 369 note 4 Ibid.

page 370 note 1 Ibid.

page 372 note 1 Plantinga, Alvin, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974)Google Scholar and God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman, 1977.

page 373 note 1 God, Freedom, and Evil, p. 23.

page 373 note 2 Ibid. p. 54.

page 373 note 3 See Mackie, J. L., The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), esp. pp. 173–6.Google Scholar and Kenny, Anthony, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), esp. p. 70.Google Scholar

page 374 note 1 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Garnett, Constance, revised and edited by Matlaw, Ralph E. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), p. 216.Google Scholar

page 374 note 2 God, Freedom, and Evil, pp. 63–4.

page 374 note 3 A good example of how Ivan's atheism might lend itself to philosophical reflection can be found in Sutherland's, StewartAtheism and the Rejection of God (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), esp. pp. 2540.Google Scholar